ASRock X79 Extreme6 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: For the price it's very good, everything is great except the ram slots are faulty

Cons: The ram slots died on me, one day my computer wouldn't turn on, checked that I had to remove one of my RAM stick and found out 2 of the RAM slots are defective, and it's not the RAM itself as I've tested it.

Other Thoughts: Now I need to find a way to RMA this board. Other then that the board itself is good.

Pros: Fast and stable. It's solidly built, with a perfect number of various I/O ports. Gold caps are nice too.
Very user friendly, love the tuning utility and pretty BIOS interface.

Cons: RAM slots are a little counter-intuitive and little too close to CPU.
I use Thermaltake watercooler for CPU cooling, so it's not a problem for me but installing RAM in closest to CPU slots could be a problem if larger air cooler is used.

Other Thoughts: First board came in defective - SATA2_2 port was shorting but it was quickly and painlessly replaced by Newegg, so far no problems with a new board.
**Currently i have 32Gb (4x8Gb) of RAM installed, so it's possible there are problems with the board i don't know of yet.

System specs:
i7-3930K CPU
Nvidia Quadro 4000
32 (4x8Gb) GSkill RAM
Thermaltake Water2.0 cooler
250Gb Samsung SSD for OS and apps
10Tb internal storage HDDs - 2x3Tb in RAID1 for work and 2x2Tb for other stuff
OCZ ZX 1000W Modular PSU
HAF X case
Windows 7 SP1

Pros: All of the features work

Cons: Installing the drivers are a true pain. There is no single install. You have to individually install the drivers for each feature.

Currently having issues with the boot manager. The Mobo recognizes my SSD but it won't let me set it as the primary boot, it doesn't show up in the primary boot menu.

Worst issue I am having at the moment is that I just installed a new GPU and after I installed the drivers for it my sound does not work. I have been working for about a day on it and have yet to find a solution. I have contacted their tech support about the issue, and I hope they reply.

Other Thoughts: This board gave me the ability to do everything I wanted for a year. I've had to deal with issues but overall I am still somewhat satisfied.

I will be returning my business to nvidia or I will be trying out ASUS next.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
To set desire boot drive, please enter BIOS, Boot, Hard Drive BBS Priorities.
For the sound issue, please reinstall the sound driver.
Set the default sound playback device to appropriate speaker at Control Panel, Sound, Playback.
If you have any technical issues or warranty questions please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: As the long as the board works, it is wonderful. In the long run it is unreliable.

Cons: If anything should happen to the board, then it will be a nightmare to get service from Asrock.
I provided the invoice for service on the MB. After multiple conversation and sending pictures of the box and MB, they wanted to charge $50 for out of warranty board. Mind you the board is still in warranty. I have the invoice. Their argument is the SN does not show up on their system so they have to treat the board as out of warranty. It is scam. Asrock wants the customer to pay for their broken system and a board in warranty..

Other Thoughts: Unless they improve their overall customer service from Point Of Sale to the end of life for the product, please avoid. Trust me. If you are unlucky to get a board that breaks down in less than a year, you will go through a lot of grief for a product that is in warranty.. You will be asked to shell out more money for a product in warranty.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We do not charge the mainboard with under warranty unless it does not meet the RMA policy.
For more information about RMA policy, please visit at link "http://www.ASRock.com/support/index.asp?cat=Policy ".
As always, we appreciate your purchase and constructive reviews are welcome.
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact us at user@ASRockamerica.com. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: 2011 board, atx

Cons: Randomly freezes or restarts on its own. Tried 3 different sets of memory, 2 different cpu's, different psu's, different video cards, same results- just freezes up sitting there, after running through benchmark s/w with np. Never had a board this flaky. Love the asus and msi boards, have had no problem with their socket 2011 boards....get what you pay for, don't go cheap. This board was cheap.

Other Thoughts: Corsair ax1200
Coisair ddr2400
EVGA 680's
Samsung 512 SSD, WD black 1T
I7 3820 cpu, with coolermaster tpc812 cpu cooler
corsair v70 case with 8 fans

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize that you having difficulty with mainboard.
For the freeze issue, please check the temperature of the CPU and system are not overheated.
Set the UEFI BIOS default.
Test with single memory module, try with another known good memory if its same issue.
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: This is a nice looking, sturdy feeling board with plenty of bells and whistles. The heatsink mounting plate is particularly nice, as it is all metal and very sturdy. This is a major plus if you are using a non-stock heatsink like a Zalman 9900MAX. The BIOS is mouse driven and looks good. The board I got was able to recognize and properly auto-configure a 16gb (2x8) GSkill Trident 2400mhz DDR3 kit no problem. Overclocking is a breeze with the auto OC options in the BIOS. 8 Dimms with support for 64Gb of RAM? AWESOME!

Cons: The only real minor gripes I have with this board is that the BIOS layout is a bit tedious and not the most intuitive. But it isn't a big deal. And the USB 3.0 header on the board, like all boards it seems, doesn't lock the connector to the board, which means anytime you do anything in the case you will most likely disconnect the USB 3.0 header from the board.

Other Thoughts: For anyone checking compatibility, here is my system:
ASRock X79 Extreme6 LGA 2011 mobo
Zalman 9900MAX cooler
EVGA Geforce GTX 670 4Gb
Intel i7 3820 @4.4Ghz
Asus Xonar D1 sound card
Rosewill Thor V2 case
Corsair HX750 PSU
GSkill Trident 16Gb (2x8) 2400Mhz kit
Mushkin Chronos Enhanced 120Gb SSD

Pros: 8 Ram Slots, RAID, Lots of Sata ports (however I have not tested the RAID...), GraphUserIinterface Bios and came with 3.5" external USB 3 panel. USB3 speeds are tasty.

Cons: I docked an egg because maybe 5% of the time this board will hang during post. It hasn't been that big of deal for my application; the user just hits the reset button and then its fine. However I would not recommend this board for a server that would need to reboot automatically. I purchase 4 of these boards and every one has hung on me at least once. My estimate is 3 of them hang 1/40 and 4th hangs 1/10 of the time.

Other Thoughts: This board works quite well and has plenty of ram slots to use up old leftover ram. I purchased 4 of these for architectural workstations which running several graphical applications simultaneaously. i7-3820, 2x8GB Corsair Vengence DDR3-1600, HIS Radeon HD 7750, Rosewill 600w PSU, WD Black 1TB, W7 Pro

Pros: -Looks like it could fit in the Batmobile. My NZXT Switch 810 complements it really well.

-UEFI looks great and has good functionality

-If you don't have an optical drive (or for some weird reason you don't want the bloatware from the disk...(sarcasm)) all the drivers are easy to find on the official website. I'm listing it as a pro because I've had bad experience with that in the past

-Everything is placed almost perfectly for any modern PSU to reach in a full-tower configuration.

Cons: -It costs money. If it was free it'd be perfect.

Other Thoughts: I wanted to buy this MoBo for a long time, I watched a lot of review videos with it, and i don't know, I guess I expected it to be a spectacular experience with high performance computing and internet rainbows flying all over my room. As good as this motherboard is, its still just a motherboard. Its still just a medium for your impressive hardware to use. Its like a painters canvas, no matter how high quality the canvas is, if the paintbrush and paint are cheap and low quality, the painting (or what we focus on more in the world of computing, the painting process) isn't going to be as good.

I made the mistake of over-hyping the product in my mind, but it works great and looks better.. Worth the money in my opinion.

Pros: Low price, 2oz copper (feel the weight), 8 DIMM slots, nice fan on the X79 heatsink, great BIOS, I think that this is a high quality board that is working for me as I expected it to. LGA 2011 offers serious OC potential. ASRock tuning utilities work very well.

Cons: Can't find any.

Other Thoughts: This is the third ASRock build for me this year and the more that I learn about their products the more I like them. The design and production engineers appear to have this technology in very clear focus. Runs my 32GB 2400MT/s memory kit perfectly and did it with one click of the XMP profile in the BIOS. Come on guys, I have been in this field professionally, as an adult since 1967 and have retired with pension from the electrical workers union and I have no criticism of this motherboard.

Pros: Bought this as an open box... Everything worked and booted to the desktop on the first power up... System runs cool and quiet with a slight overclock on the processor and the ram running at 2133...

Cons: Not a single glitch with the board...
Newegg on the other hand, has been getting very disappointing with their shipping anymore.... Their use of FedEx and DHL has me going elsewhere more than I used to.... This board took almost 2 weeks to arrive... If you watch your tracking, you will see FedEx saying that they gave it to the post office for a couple of days, and then they say that they have it again and it just sits at their facilities for 2 or 3 days here and there.... I guess they do that to make it look like it is not their fault, but it is costing Newegg in business for using them...

Other Thoughts: I have purchased around 6 Asrock boards in the last few months... I could not be happier with any of them... They have all worked flawlessly without any issues...
They are so feature rich, that it will take time to check out all of the features...

I-7 3820
Windows 7 64 bit
32GB Kingston Beast running at 2133
OCZ Vector 256 GB Boot drive
Radeon 5870 2 GB
Corsair H-80
OCZ 650 watt PSU