14 DAY TRIAL // The times when “small” equaled “weak” on the motherboard market has long since passed, as ASRock is all too gleefully reminding us with its latest product release.
The Z97 OC Formula was overpowered but expected, the Extreme 4 and Extreme 6 as well. Especially the Extreme 4, which might actually strike a good price-performance balance if we're lucky.
The ASRock Z97E-ITX /ac, though, is not exactly as big as you might expect a strong 9-Series mainboard to be.
Still, ASRock wanted a mini-ITX motherboard prone to overclocking and outperforming whatever expectations you might have set forth, so that's what it built.
You'll find an 8-pin power connector delivering energy to the LGA 1150 CPU socket, a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n /ac module, Gigabit Ethernet LAN, 7.1 Channel audio, four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 connectors, four video outputs (dual HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort) and four SATA 6.0 Gbps ports.
A SATA Express port is included as well, as are a pair of DDR3 DIMM slots and a single PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot (for graphics cards, obviously).
All in all, you should be able to create a pretty strong LAN party PC with one of these ASRock Z97E-ITX /ac motherboards, since they allow for 16 GB DDR3 RAM and can hold the best Intel CPUs and AMD/NVIDIA graphics. Just make sure you use a strong enough PSU.