Z77 Extreme4 and Z77 Extreme6 Dual Review
So today I will provide a dual review of two of ASRock?s most popular Z77 motherboards, the Z77 Extreme4 and Z77 Extreme6. Both of them are in the mainstream price segment, the Z77 Extreme4 being a low cost entry level enthusiast motherboard, and the Z77 Extreme6 being more of a mainstream enthusiast product. So today we will delve into the world of ASRock motherboards, as this is the first time I am reviewing ASRock boards for my fans, and it should be very interesting as I pull the boards apart and check out what they are made of, as well as put them through their paces. Now ASRock has been around a very long time, they are basically a product of ASUS, back in the day ASUS and Pegatron (ASRock?s parent company) were one company. However they split up so that Pegatron could make products for other vendors without the ASUS name attached to it. Pegatron took ASRock, however their bond didn?t end there, ASUS still needed Pegatron to build their boards and thus share things with each other. However that recently changed a whole lot when ASUS decided to start selling its ~25% share of Pegatron. That greatly reduced the amount of parts available to ASRock, such as the CHiL 8-Phase digital PWM, that is why all ASRock Z77 boards(except OC Formula) use the Intersil ISL6367 which is analog at heart, and why ASRock didn?t want to change its marketing (still says digital PWM). ASRock has always been very good at offering the same features for a lower price than the other motherboard makers; let?s see what they have to offer!
So this review will go in two parts, first the Extreme4 and then the Extreme6 hardware analysis, then everything after that is combined:
The Z77 Extreme4 Physical Analysis:
The accessories are few, just the basics. Two SATA 6GB/s cables and a single SLI connector with an I/O shield.
Now here is where it gets interesting, this board is actually pretty decent spec wise for the price. You also have a bunch of big heatsinks to cool down the VRMs, decent slot layout, and good color scheme. You have 6 fan headers, 2 of them are 4-pin PWM, and they can all be controlled through the UEFI.
The backpanel:
1. 4x USB 3.0
2. 1 PS/2
3. D-SUB
4. DVI
5. HDMI
6. ClearCMOS
7. 2x USB 2.0
8. eSATA ?6G?
9. 7.1 TOSLINK
10. RJ-45 1GBit
We also see 5 chips on the backside of the PCB, these are Intersil drivers for the VRM.
ASRock did a nice job with the heatsinks, they look really fancy and have nice gold lettering. They also are styled very nicely. Underneath them is an 8+2+1+1 phase VRM powered by an Intersil analog PWM. The power connectors are in a good place. There are also 3 fan headers (1 is PWM), and they are well placed right above the CPU socket.
The bottom is a bit more interesting, for the price of this board ASRock provides you a POST Code display and power and reset buttons internally, however no voltage read points. The PCI-E layout is a bit odd, there is no last 4x slot like you see on a lot of motherboards, however there are 2 PCI slots, and 2 PCI-E 1x slots. There are a total of 6 SATA headers from Intel, and the last gray one without a sticker covering it is a ASMedia powered pair of SATA6GB/s(SATA III) ports, however as we will see these ports are being multiplexed by an SATA3GB/s(SATAII) switch, which is limit their maximum potential.
So we will remove the heatsinks and see what is under them!
First off the heatsinks.
They are all held down by plastic push pins.
I love looking at VRMs, usually for flaws or beauty, and this VRM is a mix of both. The gold capacitors and the inductors and the heatsinks look really nice, and they are at the same quality as a good ASUS board. However you need to take off the heatsinks to see what they cooling. ASRock is using D-PAK MOSFETs under the heatsinks, D-PAKs were phased out years ago on enthusiast VRMs because of their lack of performance compared to newer low RDS(ON) packages such as PowerPAK and LF-PAK when it comes to thermals. They can cause a lot of heat as they aren?t so well suited for really fast switching power supplies such as needed for newer processors. However you can find them on a few sub $80 motherboards and the Z77 Extreme4.
What bothers me about a lot of reviewers is that they totally miss this issue, most possibly because they don?t bother popping off the heatsinks.
Here we have another oddity, Instead of using a doubler/dual-driver for each 2 phases such as the Z77 Extreme6 does, the Z77 Extreme4 uses 5 Intersil ISL6612 which are just simple drivers(4 for the vCore and 1 for the iGPU). Now ASRock is also doubling its phases, however the issues here is that they are linking two phases to each other, so it is a big 4 phase VRM made to look like a 8 phase VRM with added inductors. There VRM is controlled by an ISL6367, a very high tech analog PWM. We will get into the PWM more with the Z77 Extreme6, as ASRock advertises the PWM as fully digital, while even Intersil doesn?t do this. The Z77 Extreme4?s VRM needs to be a bit better, I mean they could have just used 4 phases of high quality and still had the same cost, but sometimes they have to play the phase wars against GIGABYTE and ASUS. Every phase in my book requires its own driver, thus making this board a 4 phase VRM.
At least it looks nice though, it can probably do okay with Ivy Bridge on air, just make sure to have airflow over the VRM.
The memory VRM on the Extreme4 uses much higher quality MOSFETs, the same as the Extreme6?s CPU VRM, which are actually very good.
An ASM1042 provides two of the USB 3.0 ports on the backpanel.
An ALC898 provides the audio, it is actually a pretty good audio codec. ASRock also chooses to always uses these Broadcom NICs, BCM57781 is used, and some xfast software for the LAN is also provided (based on cFOS).
Here we have a very odd dilemma. The first big chip in that picture is a typical ASMedia ASM1061, a 2 port SATA6GB/s (SATA III) chip which provides for those two grey ports. However the issue is with that smaller chip, which is an ASM1453, a 2-way SATA3GB/s (SATA II) switch which provides for the backpanel?s eSATA and the top gray port. This poses two issues:
1.ASRock is advertising the back panel as eSATA 6GB/s (SATA III); however they are pairing that SATA3 controller with an SATA2 switch, meaning that it will heavily reduce the SATA6GB/s speed to speeds around SATA3GB/s.
2.They also don?t mention that internal SATA port 5 won?t operate if you use the eSATA port on the back, which I have confirmed is the case.
That is how the extra SATA/eSATA works on this board.
Some more chips here, we have the Z77 PCH at 6.7w, it provides much of the connectivity and is integrated correctly. The power and reset button and POST Code are all down here as well as a single replaceable BIOS ROM. If you fail BIOS flashing, which is pretty rare but can still happen, then you can pay $15 to get a new chip from ASRock. It is not that bad considering you can change it yourself which is convenient.
Those four PCI-E switches are all PCI-E 3.0.
That concludes are adventure with the Z77 Extreme4, now let?s move to the Z77 Extreme6.
The Z77 Extreme6 Physical Analysis:
Here we have the Z77 Extreme6 box, it is a bit bigger than that of the Extreme4, and you do get a lot more.
This board has a lot more accessories; first you have a USB 3.0 front bracket, with an adapter for the back panel, same as the Z77 OC Formula. We also have a SLI bridge, 4 SATA cables, and an I/O shield. Many more accessories than the Extreme4, but that also comes with a higher price.
This board has much beefier heatsinks and they look nice. It also has the same 6 fan headers in somewhat different locations than the Z77 Extreme4. The PCI-E Layout is also better, with the inclusion of an extra PCI-E 4x slot at the bottom. There is also a PLX chip to expand PCI-E lanes for the extra slot; we will get to this later on.
The backpanel:
1. 4x USB 3.0
2. D-SUB and DVI
3. HDMI and Display Port
4. ClearCMOS
5. 2x USB 2.0
6. 1394A
7. eSATA ?6GB/s?
8. RJ-45 1GBIT NIC
9. 7.1 TOSLINK
Here the back of the board carries doublers/drivers as well as the true color of the PCB.
Here we have 12+2+1+1 phases. We also have some more features, like for instance the extra MOLEX power connector. This board looks much more equipped than the Z77 Extreme4.
The PCI-E layout is done like any typical PCI-E layout, with the first two slots hooked to the CPU and the last 4x slot is hooked up to the PCH. The PLX chip is hooked up to the two 1x slots and the Broadcom NIC. This board also has the same buttons and POST Code display as the Extreme4.
Here we have the heatsinks, they are actually pretty nice.
Here we have the underside of the heatsinks, notice that now they are using screws to hold down the heatsinks.
Here the board is nude and the D-PAK MOSFETs are gone from the VRM. The board is starting to look good already.
An ISL6367 is the main PWM, it can be considered hybrid (Intersil says it is), but at heart it is an analog PWM, thus not considered digital. It is a 6+1 phase PWM, thus to get 12 phases ASRock uses ISL6611 doublers/dual drivers, thus we can call this a 12 phase VRM as each phase has its own driver.
The components on this board are of much higher quality than the Z77 Extreme4. In fact looking at the PWM and the MOSFETs and the doublers it seems that ASRock is using the same exact components as the X58A-UD5 and X58A-UD7 did for their VRM. However the inductors and the capacitors are different. All in all I would call this a pretty decent VRM, with 4921N as the high-side and 4935N as the low-side MOSFETs, two MOSFETs per phase which is the standard design.
Here we have the same exact memory VRM as the Z77 Extreme4, which is a plus for both boards.
Here we have the PLX8605 which expands a single PCI-E 1x into 3 PCI-E 1x, thus they go to the two 1x slots and then the Broadcom NIC.
Here we also see the same ASMedia ASM1061 and the same ASM1453 switch chip, this means that the SATA6G is also being switched with a SATA3G switch, meaning the same bottleneck that exists on the Z77 Extreme4 also exists here.
The same issues as the Z77 Extreme4 exist here.
#1. The SATA3G switch can put a max cap on the SATA6G speeds on both the Port 5 and the eSATA port.
#2. The other issue is that if you use Port5 then eSATA is disabled and vice versa.
Here we have the Z77 PCH at 6.7W. Then we have another ASMedia chip the ASM1083 which is a PCI-E to PCI chip which provides both PCI slots. The POST code display and the buttons seem to be the same as the Z77 Extreme4; we also have that single replaceable BIOS ROM.
Here we have a VT6308 which provides the internal 1394A header and the I/O header. Here we also have the ALC898 and the Broadcom 57781. However there are some chips on this board which I didn?t show on the Z77 Extreme4 as to not be repetitive, and they hold a great feature of these two ASRock boards. The first two are NCT3941 which are fan control chips (two 8 pin chips located right near the two fan headers in the image above), the two of these with the big Nuvoton chip below provide the fan control.
The NCT6776D is the SuperI/O and it also provides the PS/2 on the backpanel. In that corner we also have a TI drivers and receivers chip which provides the COM port.
Finally we have an EJ168A which provides two USB 3.0 ports which is exactly what the ASM1061 does on the Z77 Extreme4, so I guess this one might be of higher quality and why it is on the Extreme6 not the Extreme4.
All in all this ends the section of this review dealing with both boards, from here on out both boards will be compared directly.
BIOS Section:
What I like about the ASRock UEFI is that it is very thorough just like ASUS?s and GIGABYTE?s; everything you can control is there. Also ASRock has a somewhat interactive map of the board. The layout of ASRock?s UEFI is just like that of ASUS?s, almost exactly same structure with all OC settings on one page and then more detailed settings in other pages. You should notice that LLC is reversed, Level 1 is strongest.
Overclocking:
Here is the max CPU overclocks, however 24/7 OC is much lower. On the Z77 Extreme4 you can do a max OC almost as high as that on the Extreme6.
Here you need to take a look at how LLC works on these motherboards, they have the same strength LLC per setting, however CPUz reporting is so much different than real voltage being applied. Look how different the CPUz report and real voltage readouts are! A video is also provided to show you this discrepancy.
Max CPU and BCLK OC on the Z77 Extreme4:
Decent maximum OC and maximum BCLK OC.
Now the Extreme6:
The Z77 Extreme6 does about 10mhz higher on the CPU frequency and about 0.1mhz higher on the BCLK than the Z77 Extreme4, which is normal as the Extreme6 is better tuned.
Benchmarks:
The Z77 Extreme6 has some potential.
Software:
ASRock?s main tuning utility, like TurboV and EasyTune6, pretty complete.
This LAN utility uses cFOS as a backbone.
USB booster.
Audio.
Virtu MVP.
Audio and SATA testing:
Remember our SATA?
So surprisingly the ASMedia eSATA port is performing a bit above SATA 3GB/s standards, into SATA6GB/s range, however its performance is not much compared to Intel SATA6G, same drive was used and multiple runs were done. ASRock should use a SATA6GB/s switch with their real SATA6GB/s controller.
Conclusion:
Honestly these boards need to have prices attached to them as the price shows things in new light. The Z77 Extreme 4 is $125 and the Z77 Extreme6 is $160. The Z77 boards basically have 2 things to do well for overclocking, first they have to have a good VRM to sustain nice CPU overclocks and then they have to have good memory topology routing. While ASRock didn?t adopt T-Topology for these two boards, 2DIMM OC worked fine with XMP. The ASRock Z77 Extreme4 needs a better VRM to be considered for enthusiast overclocking, even BIOSTAR uses better components in that price range, ASRock needs to up the ante on quality on the Z77 Extreme4 if they want to compete for overclockers? hearts. However even with that issue, ASRock has done a great job on a few fronts on both boards. First off the UEFI seem to be pretty decent and fan control was really good, and for the most part everything worked correctly. The UEFI seems like it has some cool features like updating directly from the internet, however for me that is a bit risky since the board only has 1 BIOS ROM to update like that.
What is interesting is how the LLC is pretty out of whack, and how different CPUz is from real readings, I highly recommending trying to read the voltages with a DMM if at all possible, I can even post solder points if needed. Audio performance is pretty decent, however that eSATA/Gray port thing is pretty odd, and I am surprised no one has picked up on this before. All in all if you don?t have much money and want a lot for your money, then the Z77 Extreme4 is really great for that. The Z77 Extreme6 overall was a much better board all around than the Z77 Extreme4, it just shows you that you get what you pay for, however just like always ASRock delivers pretty good value boards.
Pros:
Low Price/Features
UEFI is decent
All VRM heatsinked
Software Package
Fan Control
Good color matching
Cons:
SATA2 switch instead of SATA3 switch
D-PAK MOSFETs on the Extreme4
CPUz readings much lower than real reading
No T-Topology
So today I will provide a dual review of two of ASRock?s most popular Z77 motherboards, the Z77 Extreme4 and Z77 Extreme6. Both of them are in the mainstream price segment, the Z77 Extreme4 being a low cost entry level enthusiast motherboard, and the Z77 Extreme6 being more of a mainstream enthusiast product. So today we will delve into the world of ASRock motherboards, as this is the first time I am reviewing ASRock boards for my fans, and it should be very interesting as I pull the boards apart and check out what they are made of, as well as put them through their paces. Now ASRock has been around a very long time, they are basically a product of ASUS, back in the day ASUS and Pegatron (ASRock?s parent company) were one company. However they split up so that Pegatron could make products for other vendors without the ASUS name attached to it. Pegatron took ASRock, however their bond didn?t end there, ASUS still needed Pegatron to build their boards and thus share things with each other. However that recently changed a whole lot when ASUS decided to start selling its ~25% share of Pegatron. That greatly reduced the amount of parts available to ASRock, such as the CHiL 8-Phase digital PWM, that is why all ASRock Z77 boards(except OC Formula) use the Intersil ISL6367 which is analog at heart, and why ASRock didn?t want to change its marketing (still says digital PWM). ASRock has always been very good at offering the same features for a lower price than the other motherboard makers; let?s see what they have to offer!
So this review will go in two parts, first the Extreme4 and then the Extreme6 hardware analysis, then everything after that is combined:
The Z77 Extreme4 Physical Analysis:
The accessories are few, just the basics. Two SATA 6GB/s cables and a single SLI connector with an I/O shield.
Now here is where it gets interesting, this board is actually pretty decent spec wise for the price. You also have a bunch of big heatsinks to cool down the VRMs, decent slot layout, and good color scheme. You have 6 fan headers, 2 of them are 4-pin PWM, and they can all be controlled through the UEFI.
The backpanel:
1. 4x USB 3.0
2. 1 PS/2
3. D-SUB
4. DVI
5. HDMI
6. ClearCMOS
7. 2x USB 2.0
8. eSATA ?6G?
9. 7.1 TOSLINK
10. RJ-45 1GBit
We also see 5 chips on the backside of the PCB, these are Intersil drivers for the VRM.
ASRock did a nice job with the heatsinks, they look really fancy and have nice gold lettering. They also are styled very nicely. Underneath them is an 8+2+1+1 phase VRM powered by an Intersil analog PWM. The power connectors are in a good place. There are also 3 fan headers (1 is PWM), and they are well placed right above the CPU socket.
The bottom is a bit more interesting, for the price of this board ASRock provides you a POST Code display and power and reset buttons internally, however no voltage read points. The PCI-E layout is a bit odd, there is no last 4x slot like you see on a lot of motherboards, however there are 2 PCI slots, and 2 PCI-E 1x slots. There are a total of 6 SATA headers from Intel, and the last gray one without a sticker covering it is a ASMedia powered pair of SATA6GB/s(SATA III) ports, however as we will see these ports are being multiplexed by an SATA3GB/s(SATAII) switch, which is limit their maximum potential.
So we will remove the heatsinks and see what is under them!
First off the heatsinks.
They are all held down by plastic push pins.
I love looking at VRMs, usually for flaws or beauty, and this VRM is a mix of both. The gold capacitors and the inductors and the heatsinks look really nice, and they are at the same quality as a good ASUS board. However you need to take off the heatsinks to see what they cooling. ASRock is using D-PAK MOSFETs under the heatsinks, D-PAKs were phased out years ago on enthusiast VRMs because of their lack of performance compared to newer low RDS(ON) packages such as PowerPAK and LF-PAK when it comes to thermals. They can cause a lot of heat as they aren?t so well suited for really fast switching power supplies such as needed for newer processors. However you can find them on a few sub $80 motherboards and the Z77 Extreme4.
What bothers me about a lot of reviewers is that they totally miss this issue, most possibly because they don?t bother popping off the heatsinks.
Here we have another oddity, Instead of using a doubler/dual-driver for each 2 phases such as the Z77 Extreme6 does, the Z77 Extreme4 uses 5 Intersil ISL6612 which are just simple drivers(4 for the vCore and 1 for the iGPU). Now ASRock is also doubling its phases, however the issues here is that they are linking two phases to each other, so it is a big 4 phase VRM made to look like a 8 phase VRM with added inductors. There VRM is controlled by an ISL6367, a very high tech analog PWM. We will get into the PWM more with the Z77 Extreme6, as ASRock advertises the PWM as fully digital, while even Intersil doesn?t do this. The Z77 Extreme4?s VRM needs to be a bit better, I mean they could have just used 4 phases of high quality and still had the same cost, but sometimes they have to play the phase wars against GIGABYTE and ASUS. Every phase in my book requires its own driver, thus making this board a 4 phase VRM.
At least it looks nice though, it can probably do okay with Ivy Bridge on air, just make sure to have airflow over the VRM.
The memory VRM on the Extreme4 uses much higher quality MOSFETs, the same as the Extreme6?s CPU VRM, which are actually very good.
An ASM1042 provides two of the USB 3.0 ports on the backpanel.
An ALC898 provides the audio, it is actually a pretty good audio codec. ASRock also chooses to always uses these Broadcom NICs, BCM57781 is used, and some xfast software for the LAN is also provided (based on cFOS).
Here we have a very odd dilemma. The first big chip in that picture is a typical ASMedia ASM1061, a 2 port SATA6GB/s (SATA III) chip which provides for those two grey ports. However the issue is with that smaller chip, which is an ASM1453, a 2-way SATA3GB/s (SATA II) switch which provides for the backpanel?s eSATA and the top gray port. This poses two issues:
1.ASRock is advertising the back panel as eSATA 6GB/s (SATA III); however they are pairing that SATA3 controller with an SATA2 switch, meaning that it will heavily reduce the SATA6GB/s speed to speeds around SATA3GB/s.
2.They also don?t mention that internal SATA port 5 won?t operate if you use the eSATA port on the back, which I have confirmed is the case.
That is how the extra SATA/eSATA works on this board.
Some more chips here, we have the Z77 PCH at 6.7w, it provides much of the connectivity and is integrated correctly. The power and reset button and POST Code are all down here as well as a single replaceable BIOS ROM. If you fail BIOS flashing, which is pretty rare but can still happen, then you can pay $15 to get a new chip from ASRock. It is not that bad considering you can change it yourself which is convenient.
Those four PCI-E switches are all PCI-E 3.0.
That concludes are adventure with the Z77 Extreme4, now let?s move to the Z77 Extreme6.
The Z77 Extreme6 Physical Analysis:
Here we have the Z77 Extreme6 box, it is a bit bigger than that of the Extreme4, and you do get a lot more.
This board has a lot more accessories; first you have a USB 3.0 front bracket, with an adapter for the back panel, same as the Z77 OC Formula. We also have a SLI bridge, 4 SATA cables, and an I/O shield. Many more accessories than the Extreme4, but that also comes with a higher price.
This board has much beefier heatsinks and they look nice. It also has the same 6 fan headers in somewhat different locations than the Z77 Extreme4. The PCI-E Layout is also better, with the inclusion of an extra PCI-E 4x slot at the bottom. There is also a PLX chip to expand PCI-E lanes for the extra slot; we will get to this later on.
The backpanel:
1. 4x USB 3.0
2. D-SUB and DVI
3. HDMI and Display Port
4. ClearCMOS
5. 2x USB 2.0
6. 1394A
7. eSATA ?6GB/s?
8. RJ-45 1GBIT NIC
9. 7.1 TOSLINK
Here the back of the board carries doublers/drivers as well as the true color of the PCB.
Here we have 12+2+1+1 phases. We also have some more features, like for instance the extra MOLEX power connector. This board looks much more equipped than the Z77 Extreme4.
The PCI-E layout is done like any typical PCI-E layout, with the first two slots hooked to the CPU and the last 4x slot is hooked up to the PCH. The PLX chip is hooked up to the two 1x slots and the Broadcom NIC. This board also has the same buttons and POST Code display as the Extreme4.
Here we have the heatsinks, they are actually pretty nice.
Here we have the underside of the heatsinks, notice that now they are using screws to hold down the heatsinks.
Here the board is nude and the D-PAK MOSFETs are gone from the VRM. The board is starting to look good already.
An ISL6367 is the main PWM, it can be considered hybrid (Intersil says it is), but at heart it is an analog PWM, thus not considered digital. It is a 6+1 phase PWM, thus to get 12 phases ASRock uses ISL6611 doublers/dual drivers, thus we can call this a 12 phase VRM as each phase has its own driver.
The components on this board are of much higher quality than the Z77 Extreme4. In fact looking at the PWM and the MOSFETs and the doublers it seems that ASRock is using the same exact components as the X58A-UD5 and X58A-UD7 did for their VRM. However the inductors and the capacitors are different. All in all I would call this a pretty decent VRM, with 4921N as the high-side and 4935N as the low-side MOSFETs, two MOSFETs per phase which is the standard design.
Here we have the same exact memory VRM as the Z77 Extreme4, which is a plus for both boards.
Here we have the PLX8605 which expands a single PCI-E 1x into 3 PCI-E 1x, thus they go to the two 1x slots and then the Broadcom NIC.
Here we also see the same ASMedia ASM1061 and the same ASM1453 switch chip, this means that the SATA6G is also being switched with a SATA3G switch, meaning the same bottleneck that exists on the Z77 Extreme4 also exists here.
The same issues as the Z77 Extreme4 exist here.
#1. The SATA3G switch can put a max cap on the SATA6G speeds on both the Port 5 and the eSATA port.
#2. The other issue is that if you use Port5 then eSATA is disabled and vice versa.
Here we have the Z77 PCH at 6.7W. Then we have another ASMedia chip the ASM1083 which is a PCI-E to PCI chip which provides both PCI slots. The POST code display and the buttons seem to be the same as the Z77 Extreme4; we also have that single replaceable BIOS ROM.
Here we have a VT6308 which provides the internal 1394A header and the I/O header. Here we also have the ALC898 and the Broadcom 57781. However there are some chips on this board which I didn?t show on the Z77 Extreme4 as to not be repetitive, and they hold a great feature of these two ASRock boards. The first two are NCT3941 which are fan control chips (two 8 pin chips located right near the two fan headers in the image above), the two of these with the big Nuvoton chip below provide the fan control.
The NCT6776D is the SuperI/O and it also provides the PS/2 on the backpanel. In that corner we also have a TI drivers and receivers chip which provides the COM port.
Finally we have an EJ168A which provides two USB 3.0 ports which is exactly what the ASM1061 does on the Z77 Extreme4, so I guess this one might be of higher quality and why it is on the Extreme6 not the Extreme4.
All in all this ends the section of this review dealing with both boards, from here on out both boards will be compared directly.
BIOS Section:
What I like about the ASRock UEFI is that it is very thorough just like ASUS?s and GIGABYTE?s; everything you can control is there. Also ASRock has a somewhat interactive map of the board. The layout of ASRock?s UEFI is just like that of ASUS?s, almost exactly same structure with all OC settings on one page and then more detailed settings in other pages. You should notice that LLC is reversed, Level 1 is strongest.
Overclocking:
Here is the max CPU overclocks, however 24/7 OC is much lower. On the Z77 Extreme4 you can do a max OC almost as high as that on the Extreme6.
Here you need to take a look at how LLC works on these motherboards, they have the same strength LLC per setting, however CPUz reporting is so much different than real voltage being applied. Look how different the CPUz report and real voltage readouts are! A video is also provided to show you this discrepancy.
Max CPU and BCLK OC on the Z77 Extreme4:
Decent maximum OC and maximum BCLK OC.
Now the Extreme6:
The Z77 Extreme6 does about 10mhz higher on the CPU frequency and about 0.1mhz higher on the BCLK than the Z77 Extreme4, which is normal as the Extreme6 is better tuned.
Benchmarks:
The Z77 Extreme6 has some potential.
Software:
ASRock?s main tuning utility, like TurboV and EasyTune6, pretty complete.
This LAN utility uses cFOS as a backbone.
USB booster.
Audio.
Virtu MVP.
Audio and SATA testing:
Remember our SATA?
So surprisingly the ASMedia eSATA port is performing a bit above SATA 3GB/s standards, into SATA6GB/s range, however its performance is not much compared to Intel SATA6G, same drive was used and multiple runs were done. ASRock should use a SATA6GB/s switch with their real SATA6GB/s controller.
Conclusion:
Honestly these boards need to have prices attached to them as the price shows things in new light. The Z77 Extreme 4 is $125 and the Z77 Extreme6 is $160. The Z77 boards basically have 2 things to do well for overclocking, first they have to have a good VRM to sustain nice CPU overclocks and then they have to have good memory topology routing. While ASRock didn?t adopt T-Topology for these two boards, 2DIMM OC worked fine with XMP. The ASRock Z77 Extreme4 needs a better VRM to be considered for enthusiast overclocking, even BIOSTAR uses better components in that price range, ASRock needs to up the ante on quality on the Z77 Extreme4 if they want to compete for overclockers? hearts. However even with that issue, ASRock has done a great job on a few fronts on both boards. First off the UEFI seem to be pretty decent and fan control was really good, and for the most part everything worked correctly. The UEFI seems like it has some cool features like updating directly from the internet, however for me that is a bit risky since the board only has 1 BIOS ROM to update like that.
What is interesting is how the LLC is pretty out of whack, and how different CPUz is from real readings, I highly recommending trying to read the voltages with a DMM if at all possible, I can even post solder points if needed. Audio performance is pretty decent, however that eSATA/Gray port thing is pretty odd, and I am surprised no one has picked up on this before. All in all if you don?t have much money and want a lot for your money, then the Z77 Extreme4 is really great for that. The Z77 Extreme6 overall was a much better board all around than the Z77 Extreme4, it just shows you that you get what you pay for, however just like always ASRock delivers pretty good value boards.
Pros:
Low Price/Features
UEFI is decent
All VRM heatsinked
Software Package
Fan Control
Good color matching
Cons:
SATA2 switch instead of SATA3 switch
D-PAK MOSFETs on the Extreme4
CPUz readings much lower than real reading
No T-Topology
