Final Thoughts
Well let me start with what I do like about this board. I always like to see power and reset buttons on the motherboard itself. These are perfect when you are troubleshooting or when you have the system on a test bench. ASRock also does a good job with cooling on the board with its passive design that is minimal and out of the way of larger CPU coolers. I like that the XFast LAN utility is included, it is really useful, especially for gamers. This board also has USB 3.0 (internal and external) as well as SATA 6GB/s support.
With that being said there really is not much else I like about this board. The overall design of this board is boring. This is their Extreme board, you would think that they would make it a little bit interesting (The Gen 3 version of this board got a little facelift). Having the UEFI BIOS is nice, but the options were a little limited and seemed to be lacking compared to other BIOS’s that we have seen. It also seemed a bit sluggish.
Overclocking was a pain on this board. My max stable overclock was 4.4GHz, which was a little disappointing. Also if the system would not post it would just sit there and do nothing. It would not cycle and bring up an error or anything. I would have to reset the CMOS each time I had an unsuccessful overclock. The Extreme Tuning Utility is a nice thing to have, but is very basic compared to overclocking software offered by ASUS and Gigabyte.
Right now this board is selling for $174.99 at my favorite online retailer. At that price there are other offerings that I would choose. With everything being said ThinkComputers gives the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard a 7 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Good cooling
– XFast LAN Utility
– On board power and reset buttons
Cons:
– Boring design
– UEFI BIOS is a little sluggish
– Not that great at overclocking
