Layout
At a first glance the ASRock
Fatal1ty Z97 Killer looks very good with its harmonic design. The PCB as well as a few expansion slot are kept in black and two memory slots, the PCI-Expres Gen 3.0 x16 slots and the heatsinks are red. The
layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around
the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. ASRock decided to go for straight SATA connectors. In order to avoid compatibility issues with powerful and large graphics cards the maker placed them at the bottom edge of the motherboard.
The ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer received eight digital power phases regardin the CPU. Furthermore ASRock equips this board with their so called "Super Alloy 9 chokes". Like the name indicates the new chokes are made from an alloy, which helps reducing operating temperature. Also ripple as well as DCR are lower than with the chokes used on previous generation motherobards. Apart from that, saturation saturation current is higher (38A instead of 20A). The memory gets a stable current supply from two individual
phases. The VRM design on this motherboard is overall quite strong and another reason for that is the use of the latest NexFet MOSFETs.
Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the
Fatal1ty Z97 Killer. Officially supported are DDR3
3000(O.C.) / 2933(O.C.) / 2800(O.C.) / 2666(O.C.) / 2600(O.C.) / 2500(O.C.) / 2400(O.C.) / 2200(O.C.) / 2133(O.C.) / 2000(O.C.) / 1866(O.C.) / 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which
means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders.
Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 1.3.
On the
Fatal1ty Z97 Killer the southbridge is being cooled by a
passive cooling block. A closer look at the VRM area shows
that there is an additional heatsinks. All heatsinks are milled from a solid piece of aluminium and the cooling they provide to the onboard components is sufficient to keep everything at reasonable temperatures.
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