AS Rock LGA1155 DDR3 SATA3 USB3.0 Quad CrossFireX and Quad SLI A GbE ATX Motherboard Z77 EXTREME4

by ASRock

• CPU: LGA1155; Supports 2nd/3rd Generation Intel Core i7/ i5/ i3 Processor; Supports Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology; Supports Hyper-Threading Technology
• Chipset: Intel Z77
• Memory: 4X DDR3-2800+(OC)/2400(OC)/2133(OC)/1866(OC)/1600/1333/1066 DIMM Slots, Non-ECC, Unbuffered, Dual Channel, Maxi Capacity up to 32GB
• Slots: 2X PCI-Express 3.0 X16 Slots (runs at X8), 2 X PCI Express 2.0 X1 Slots, 2 X PCI Slots
• SATA: 4X SATA3 Ports (one connector is shared with eSATA3 port), Two Support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10; 4X SATA2 Ports, Support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 12 x 2.5 x 8.6 inches ; 1.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B007KTY4A6
• Item model number: Z77 EXTREME4
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #1 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Components > Motherboards
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 30, 2012

Product Description

AS Rock Z77 EXTREME4 LGA1155/ DDR3/ SATA3&USB3.0/ Quad CrossFireX & Quad SLI/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome board November 2, 2012

By bob

I put this board in my computer about 6 months ago. My computer is a 2u that sits as a thick client in a server rack. There are several reasons I chose this board, other than price.

1) Solid capacitors (caps are the leading cause of boards bricking over time. "cross-tops" or non-solid capacitors can split or even leak 'goo' when they heat up. It isn't that they aren't rated for their designated uF, they just aren't built for longevity. Solid caps are.)

2) 8+4 phased VRM with pulse modulation (the cleaner the current is to the CPU, the more efficient it is. Pulse modulation uses switching to deliver current much like high end PSUs. With the additional {8+4} transistors/chokes/phases the load is spread out more, letting it run cooler and making it safe (virtually unheard of) from overloading the CPU. These are features that make this board inherently reliable.)

3) The second SATAIII controller {ASMedia ASM1061}supports hot swap at full 6.0 speed.
The Intel controller only supports 2 of the four SATAIII connectors {SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 for RAID}. It's the same with all cougar and panther point chipsets (p67, h67, z68, z77, x79 etc. anything with a numeric designator of 65 and up)

Speaking of SATAIII:

TRIM is NOT supported in RAID 0 in anything but a 75, 77 or 79 series chipset at present (Also you have to have the Intel Rapid Storage Tech version 11.6 or newer which is upgradable on Intel's download site. Without it, you can run 'fsutil behavior query', and it will still say zero, but enabled, and 'on' are two different things in this case). If you want to RAID 0 a pair of SSDs, and have that performance last, you have to get the TRIM working. This board meets the requirements to do that.

4) a back up ghost BIOS

5) Layout (in a 2u chassis you only have so much vertical room, and cooling is critical as you can't use tall CPU coolers, multiple 120mm fans etc. Also the PCIe has to be done via a riser card. With this board's layout I was able to fit everything into the case, to include the cooling for an i-series running at 4.2, a second NIC for the console interface, and pretty beefy graphics card supplementing the on-chip Intel HD4000 for the eyefinity.)

What I was able to get out of this board: 4.5Gigs on the CPU, tuned it down to 4.2, sometimes it hits 4.3 (but that's the board doing its own thing), 2000 MHz out of the RAM (from 16 gigs of 2133 RAM), and a Gig read and write off of the primary SSD RAID 0 array. To say that this board is as fast as the best components is an understatement. While I can't comment about gaming (I didn't build it for that) I can say that it is lightning fast, crunches big data without breaking a sweat, and sits on the edge as well or better than any computer I have plugged into the network (I used this for my computer...the one I use everyday, and have found myself dipping into the servers less and less. It is actually changing the way I work).

I've built a couple AsRock units for myself, and used one as the board in a system I designed that we offer to the public. I don't want to say anything negative about Asus, or Gigabyte but It seems like I am always having to tweak something down the road with these boards (an option you don't really have if you are building the unit to ship to customers). Biostar and Foxxconn are just awful for a list of reasons as long as my arm, MSI should stick to video cards ("military grade"?), never used an EVGA so I can't comment there. Zotac got their big niche with the ITX boards, but don't put out anything in the ATX sizes that really do anything noteworthy. Intel makes a very sound, reliable board, but they always seem to be lacking a feature or two that I can get cheaper in a different board.

In short, if I had to recommend a board for gaming, I'd probably say Asus...I've built a ton of those, and have had great results. But in a gaming rig you want to tweak stuff every once in a while.....it's part of the allure. I'm sure this ASRock board would game very well. The thing is that all of that tech they develop for gamers ends up in workstations eventually (kinda like stuff NASA came up with 10 years ago is available at the mall today)....and this is one of those crossover boards (although I doubt that's what they intended). You have all of the speed you could want but with the reliability, and simplicity (you don't have to tweak it every once in a while) you need in a daily driver.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Value, Overclockable, All The Modern Ports December 24, 2012

By SCOTT A VIETH

I've been using this board for about two months now and have no complaints. Obviously first and foremost, it does its job quite well, and is running my Core i7-2700K Sandy Bridge CPU without any issues (although it's made for Ivy Bridge, 3rd-Generation CPUs).

POSITIVES

* The number of USB3 ports is excellent, and the fact that the on-board USB3 ports are driven by separate chipsets (two on-board, two with an ASMedia chipset) means less congestion when you're pushing all of the ports at once. Plus, the additional headers making for a total of six USB3 ports is a nice overall number.

* The SATA2 and SATA3 ports are nicely organized, but they're definitely made for a case with bottom-mounting hard drives. The case I bought actually had a special mount at the bottom of the case for a 2.5" SSD or hard drive, and with how this board is built, it's perfect.

* The tools that come with the board work well, and aren't overly intrusive. XFast Turbo USB does help with USB speeds (although not as much as they claim), the XFast LAN tool provides great insight on the LAN activity of the computer, and the tuner allows for basic overclocking on the fly. I don't know if this is a CPU, or if it's the board, but the heat factor goes way up even on a small overclock, so like some other reviewers have said, I don't think I'd use this board for hardcore overclocking, but if you need a small boost, maybe 10%, this would do ok even with air-cooling.

NEGATIVES

* The SATA port that's shared with the external SATA3 port isn't clearly marked on the board, so you have to really watch which one you're using if you want to still use the eSATA port.

* Using the kind of cooler you'd want to use, in my case, the Cooler Master Hyper212 Evo, really puts the crunch on the RAM ports. If you're going to use all four RAM slots with a big-time cooler, you may want to go with low profile RAM to avoid any issues on that front. I used Corsair Vengeance RAM, and due to the large heat sink, it essentially cuts it down from 4 slots to 2 "usable" ones.

Overall, the negatives don't take it down beyond a full 5-star rating for me. They're annoyances, and in any motherboard this price, if you're hunting for perfection, you'll find one or two places where they compromised, but for the price point, this can run a good gaming rig, or be a very good daily driver, no doubt.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mother of all gaming motherboards on a budget February 28, 2013

By Mohit Keswani

Amazon Verified Purchase

I recently ordered this MB and built my first ever gaming rig after a long time. I've to give this motherboard 5 stars as it is built of high quality components and very easy to install. Only issue is that it doesn't come with onboard wireless chip but I still give it 5 stars because you pay half the price for this board compared to Asus or Gigabyte. I would definitely recommend this board for gamers who want to get the juice out of your OC'able processor.

My rig config.
This is the best overclockable processor to build a budget gaming system. Easily OC'ed to 4.2 Ghz without getting hot.
My gig
Intel Core i5-3570K
Rosewill Challenger Case
Corsair Vengeance 8Gb
Rosewill FORTRESS 750 Platinum 80 plus certified PSU
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD
ASROCK Z77 EXTREME4 MOTHERBOARD