14 DAY TRIAL // The Z97 OC Formula may be ASRock's latest and greatest motherboard, not counting anything larger than the ATX form factor anyhow, but it's not the only one that the company released. In fact, it's just one of five.
Still, of the four that we haven't checked out, the Z97 Extreme 6, at least, deserves to be looked at independently, so here we go.
You can tell that the Z97 Extreme 6 isn't meant for the same ludicrous overclocking opportunities as the OC just from looking at the power distribution.
The CPU only gets one 8-pin ATX power connector instead of two, even if the VRM (voltage regulation module) still has 12 phases.
Even without overclocking, though, any PC powered by the Haswell refresh CPU from Intel will perform well.
And since Devil's Canyon CPUs are also supported, that means that high-grade, powerful computers are just as easy to set up too, even if they won't score any OC records.
In case you were wondering, Devil's Canyon is the codename that Intel is currently using to refer to the unlocked Haswell refresh CPUs, the ones that are not coming out until the second half of the year.
On that note, future-generation Broadwell central processing units will work on the new ASRock motherboards as well, since they, too, will boast the LGA 1150 socket. But we digress.
The ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 boasts three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, two PCI Express 3.0 x1 slots, Ultra M.2 and M.2 slots (for add-in mini PCI Express cards and SSDs), a separate PCI-e power connector at the bottom (for more stability) and 10 SATA 6.0 Gbps ports.
You'll have a hard time filling your desktop computer with enough SSDs, HDDs, HHDs and/or SSHDs to get something out of all those connectors, that's for sure.
Furthermore, ASRock provided four DDR3 DIMM memory slots, plus OC and LED for Diagnostics. Because even if this is not a mainboard intended for a lot of overclocking, that doesn't mean it can't be done. It's called “Extreme” for a reason after all.
Finally, the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 features Gigabit LAN (dual ports actually), eSATA, HDMI, DisplayPort, six USB 3.0 connectors, Purity Sound 2 technology (powers 7.1 channel audio jacks) and PS/2 (for normal peripherals).
Unfortunately, ASRock didn't say what prices it will slap to the motherboard when it starts shipping them in a week or two. Look for the model with blue heatsinks if you're specifically interested in this one instead of any random ASRock Z97 mainboard.