With the Extreme7+, ASRock has a well equipped motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a plethora of features. In case of the Z170 version the vendor makes no exception and especially the variety of connectors for storage media is interesting. There are for example no less than three Ultra M.2 slots which offer up to 32 Gigabit of bandwidth.
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The Z97 Extreme7+ from ASRock comes with a ton of features and apart from that it also features stunning looks. When it comes to their Z170 line-up ASRock has decided to come up with a completely new design, which in the case of the Extreme7+ includes a cover for the back I/O connectors as well as the audio solution.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Layout |
| Page 2 - Specs and Delivery | Page 5 - Connectors and I/O |
| Page 3 - Features | Page 6 - Conclusion |
Specs and Delivery
| Chipset | Intel Z170 |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR4, 4 x DIMM, Max. 64 GB DDR4, 3500 (O.C.) / 3233 (O.C.) / 2933 (O.C.) / 2666 (O.C.) / 2400 (O.C.) / 2133 Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory |
| Multi-GPU |
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| Slots |
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| Sound | Realtek ALC1150 8-Channel Purity Sound 3
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| Storage |
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| Network |
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| Internal Connectors |
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| Extrenal Connectors |
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| Forfactor | ATX (30.5cm x 24.4cm) |
| BIOS | Bios (128 Mb flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS) |
- 4 x SATA Data Cables
- 1 x SATA-Express Data Cable
- 1 x USB Power Cable
- 1 x ASRock SLI bridge
- 1 x ASRock Front USB 3.1 Panel
- 1 x Back shield
- Quick Installation Guide, Support CD
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Layout |
| Page 2 - Specs and Delivery | Page 5 - Connectors and I/O |
| Page 3 - Features | Page 6 - Conclusion |
Features
Super Alloy Power Design |
Since quite some time ASRock has been equipping its boards with digital power designs. This time the company is rather proud, that they're using their so called "Super Alloy" chokes, which help reducing operating temperature and therefore increase lifespan. |
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ASRock APP Shop |
ASRock has made their own small App Shop. Users can download applications to optimize their system to individual needs. |  |
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M.2 / NVMe Support |
Featuring three M.2 slot this board can be equipped with SSDs in M.2 format. All slots support up to 32 Gbps bandwidth and if you wish to you can also plug in NVMe adapters. Unfortunately there are no such adapters in the delivery. |  |
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ASRock Cloud |
For it's cloud storage service ASRock partnered up with Kloudian, offering customers a free three year subscription to the service. ASRock Cloud helps you synchronizing data you have on your smartphone as well as PC. |  |
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Purity Sound 3 |
ASRocks Purity 3 audio solution is based on a Realtek ALC1150 audio codec, which features 115dB SNR. Other than that there is EMI shielding for the main chip as well as onboard insulation. To improve signal quality there are excellent Nichicon capacitors. |  |
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SATA Express Connector |
SATA Express is a port for storage devices. It combines two SATA connectors and bundles them. Each SATA Express port has been wired using two PCI Express Gen2 lanes offering a total of 10 Gbps bandwidth. Compared to SATA-III with 6 Gbps bandwidth this is quite an improvement. |  |
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| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Layout |
| Page 2 - Specs and Delivery | Page 5 - Connectors and I/O |
| Page 3 - Features | Page 6 - Conclusion |
Layout
At a first glance the ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ looks very good with its harmonic design. In this case ASRock is using a combination of black and gold. 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. The fact that there
are angled SATA connectors, which have been moved alongside the northbridge allow for easy installation of oversized graphics cards. We also like that placement of the M.2 Slots, which are above and in between the PCIe slots.
ASRock equips the Extreme7+ with a twelve phase digital power phases regarding the CPU. Furthermore there are ASRocks so called "Super Alloy chokes" on this motherboard, which, as the name indicates, are made from a special alloy. This alloy should help reducing operating temperature. Also ripple and DCR are lower than with the chokes used on previous generation motherobards. Apart from that, saturation current is also higher.
There are four DIMM-slots on the
Z170 Extreme7+. Officially supported are DDR4
3500 (O.C.) / 3233 (O.C.) / 2933 (O.C.) / 2666 (O.C.) / 2400 (O.C.) / 2133. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which
means that you won't 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 2.0.
On the
Z170 Extreme7+ the southbridge is being cooled by a
passive cooling block. A closer look at the VRM area shows
that there are two additional heatsinks connected to eachother via a heatpipe. All blocks feature excellent build quality and aprt from that also the overall weight of the motherboard is high. This underlines that the Extreme7+ is a high-end board.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Layout |
| Page 2 - Specs and Delivery | Page 5 - Connectors and I/O |
| Page 3 - Features | Page 6 - Conclusion |
Connectors and I/O
ASRock equipped the Z170 Extreme7+ with six angled SATA ports. All ports offer 6Gbps bandwidth. Apart from that there are also three SATA Express ports, which feature 10 Gbps bandwidth. There are even three "Ultra M.2" slots allowing up to 32 Gigabit per second (4 Gigabyte per second) to be pushed over the bus. You'll also find practical onboard power- and reset-buttons in the bottom right corner of the board and a debug display also isn't missing.
In total there are five fan headers on the Z170 Extreme7+ which is enough, to provide a well equipped high-end or overclocking-system with fresh air. The fan headers are located around the CPU socket as well as spread over the motherboard. All headers feature four pins, which allows controlling fans from within Windows via ASRock's bundled software.
Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel ASRock equipped the Z170 Extreme7+ with one PS2 mouse/keyboard connector, six USB 3.1 ports (one Type-C connector), two USB 2.0 ports, two gigabit ethernet ports, an HDMI connector, a DisplayPort, a DVI port and an optical out as well as an analogue audio panel.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Layout |
| Page 2 - Specs and Delivery | Page 5 - Connectors and I/O |
| Page 3 - Features | Page 6 - Conclusion |
Conclusion
| Allgemein | + | - | |
| The Z170 Extreme7+ from ASRock is definitely an interesting board. Next to an attractive design in black and blue all the different connectors for storage media are interesting. Therefore it doesn't matter whether you want to connect standard SATA drives, drives with SATA Express connector or even M.2 SSDs. In case of the M.2 slots there is even an Ultra M.2 port offering up to 32 Gigabit per second of bandwidth (4 Gigabyte per second). On such a motherboard it's then almost standard there is a capable power design. The 12+2 phases with high-side and low-side on each driver MOSFET will guarantee stable power supply for the CPU as well as to the memory. On another note we one more like the audio solution. What you get is a Realtek ALC1150 with EMI shield and alongside the chip there are high-quality Nichicon capacitors | -
Design |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| Basically the ASRock Z170 Extreme7+'s Layout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons. There is also a debug display which is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. The placement of the PCI-Express x16 is very well chosen. Between the first and the second PCI Express x16 slot there are two free slots which means that the first card in a SLI/CrossFire setup gets plenty of fresh air. Another detail we liked is the position of the first PCI-Express x1 slot, that has been located right above the first PCI-Express x16 Gen 3.0 slot. This ensures, that you always have a free x1 slot that can be equipped and apart from that there is also enough clearance to easily plug in and remove graphics cards, even if there are large coolers in CPU heatsinks in place. | - Angled SATA connectors
- Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Space around the CPU socket - Audio Solution |
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Layout |
| Page 2 - Specs and Delivery | Page 5 - Connectors and I/O |
| Page 3 - Features | Page 6 - Conclusion |