Introduction

While I'm not exactly one to play favorites when it comes to PC-hardware brands, there are distinct differences in what each brand offers its customers that really stand out to me, and for that I kind of like each brand for what I see as their strength. With ASRock, that strength is most definitely their engineering.

ASRock has released some pretty off-the-wall products in the past, with motherboards that can support twenty hard drives and a huge number of PCIe devices at the same time and overclocking boards that have time and again rocked the global rankings over at HWBot. All that experience has them as one of the top board makers in my mind, and I know for a fact that many of our readers have their products in their systems.

With the release of a new platform and a new set of features to look at, we'd take a look at that engineering power from ASRock, but rather than delving into the crazy stuff, we've got a very basic board here, the ASRock Z270 Extreme4. Straight out of ASRock's mainstream board line-up, the ASRock Z270 Extreme4 is that "basic" board ready for you to toss into any system.

Specifications

Packaging and Contents

The box for the ASRock Z270 Extreme4 is super-flashy, with black and white and blues. The rear of the box is pretty standard fare, with explanations about the board's features.


Opening up the box, you'll find the included goodies up on top, with the board itself underneath a cardboard divider. The board is wrapped in foam. You'll need to cut the zip-ties that hold the foam to the board before you can get to its installation.


There are just enough accessories in the box. A full list of what is included is below:

• Quick Installation Guide, Software Setup Guide, support CD, I/O shield;
• 1x ASRock case badge
• 4x SATA data cables
• 1x ASRock SLI_HB_Bridge_2S card
• 3x Screws for Ultra M.2 Socket/Wi-Fi slot

Board Layout

The ASRock Z270 Extreme4 looks like no other board does, that's for sure. The Z270 Extreme4 might be white and black, but it is far from simple when it comes to looks. The back of the board seems plain compared to the front.


The socket area is open and ready for all sorts of cooling. There are four DIMM slots as is customary for this type of platform from Intel.


The ASRock Z270 Extreme4 has three PCIe x16 slots and three PCIe x1 slots. You can use two of the PCIe x1 slots when you have two dual-slot VGAs installed, but one will be covered by a VGA. The rear I/O panel has a PS/2 combo port, USB in a couple flavors, LAN, and audio. HDMI, DVI, and VGA are here if you want to use the iGPU built into the CPU.


What you are looking at above is a Wi-Fi port. The ASRock Z270 Extreme4 is ready to support Wi-Fi, but does not comes with it in the box. There are eight SATA connectors here, with six of them powered by the Intel chipset, while the other two are externally driven.


The board's bottom edge has headers for USB, LED strings, and audio stuffs, as well as a fan plug and the front-panel stuff.


LAN on the ASRock Z270 Extreme4 is provided by an Intel I219V controller, pictured above. There is also an ASMedia TMDS chip, the ASM1442K.