It boasts 22 SATA ports, Thunderbolt 2 support, and 4-way multi-GPU capability

Nov 18, 2013 14:17 GMT  ·  By

Some people might think that they've seen all there is to see in the high-end motherboard industry, but ASRock's latest platform will probably prove them wrong instantly.

After all, it's not every day that you stumble across a mainboard with more SATA ports than you're likely to fit inside two desktop cases.

Yet that is the case: the ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac has no fewer than 22 SATA III connectors, courtesy of the Z87 chipset, the LSI SAS 3008 Controller, and the 3X24R Expander.

That's the equivalent of 16 SAS-3 12 Gb/s connectors and leads up to a cumulative transfer speed of 6.1 GB/s.

Then there's the presence of the PLX PEX 8747 chip, which allows four PCI Express 3.0 high-end graphics cards to work together in 4-way multi-GPU setups, in x8/x8/x8/x8 mode. That goes for both AMD CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI.

And just to add fuel to the fire, ASRock also tossed in Thunderbolt 2 support, enabling 20 Gbps transfers to and from external devices like HDDs, tablets, Thunderbolt monitors, etc.

In fact, TB can enable 12 Thunderbolt devices to be used at the same time over a single connection (daisy-chaining as it were) and you can even connect the graphics card to the exclusive DP-in port on the motherboard via a mini-DP to DP cable.

This allows you to link TB devices and monitors to the GFX card, instead of using a VGA, DisplayPort, or HDMI.

As for the rest, ASRock threw in Home Cloud, Purity Sound 115dB SNR, the world's fastest 2T2R Dual Band 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth v4.0 module (867 Mbps Internet), an exclusive Wi-SD Box (install four USB 3.0 device and an SD 3.0 card reader).

As for overclocking and endurance while doing so, the ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac comes with Dual-Stack MOSFET, Digi Power, 12 Power Phase design, and Japan-made gold capacitors.

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