ASRock Jumps the Gun and Intros the Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard

With still a few more weeks to go until Intel launches the Z68 chipset, ASRock has decided to jump the gun and introduce its new flagship motherboard, the Z68 Extreme4, making it the first company to officially release a Z68-based board for Sandy Bridge processors.

As the most advanced motherboard model in ASRock's lineup, the Z68 Extreme4 packs an impressive list of features including SLI and CrossFireX support, USB 3.0 connectivity, Intel's Smart Response SSD caching technology as well as 7.1 channel sound with support for THX TruStudio Pro and Blu-ray audio.

The expandability options are also up to par as the board features two PCI Express x1, two legacy (32bit) PCI and three PCI Express x16 slots.

Electronically, only the first slot features 16 lanes worth of PCIe bandwidth as the second one works in an x8 mode. The last of the three has four PCI Express lanes routed to it.

Storage is provided by four SATA 3Gbps and four SATA 6Gbps connectors, two of these are driven by a Marvell controller, and an additional SATA port is routed to the back of the motherboard.

Other features of the ASRock Extreme4 include on-board power and reset buttons, a BIOS debug LED, a rear mounted Clear CMOS button, and support for the Lucid Virtu graphics switching technology.

On the rear I/O bracket we find four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, eSATA, FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet connectors as well as D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs.

The Intel Z68 chipset comes as a hybrid between the H67 and P67 platform controller hubs (PCH) as it packs both an FDI interface and support for CPU multiplier adjustment.

ASRock hasn't revealed the price or release date of the Z68 Extreme4 motherboard, but Intel is expected to launch the Z68 PCH on May 11. (via Sweclockers)