Pros: For the price, this board has the best hardware, such as three M2 and with NVMe being the best drive I/O, you can't go wrong. Two UEFI chips, power and reset, dual CPU fan, 1150, Sata-e, thunderbolt and USB 3.1. Came with 1.70 and had zero problems. After building so many ASrock boards and personally owning so many, I don't even test run the boards, I install everything complete and start. Over 100 boards and not one problem that was actually the board, it was memory, or UEFI.

Cons: Absolutely not one with the board or any ASrock board. I'm not even disappointed with support, because if I have a problem with memory, want a new Sata Driver ( RAID ROM ) they will send me a new UEFI. When running in pure UEFI, the RAID ROM is not used and RAID uses what's called a Sata Diver in the UEFI, we do not have a BIOS, but they still call it a BIOS so not to confuse the people who are not advanced.

The ASrock website has small problems, who ever is updating it needs to go, poor posting of UEFI updating, funny, after complaining about the UEFI version numbers between BETA and WHQL UEFI along with posting SSD M2 950 support for a BETA but not the newer WHQL, ( example) ASrock removed all BETA's. Hope that wasn't my fault, but they didn't understand the complaint. I have never used any driver from the site so no big deal, but like storage support needs to be updated on the site, no Samsung M2 drives are listed, which is wrong.

***Who ever runs the ASrock website, please fire them and get someone whom is capable.***

Just a FYI for drivers for win 10.
As of this date, the newest drivers are - Chipset- 10.1.2.19, Audio - 7770, LAN- 20.7 installer, USB 3.1- 16.34.2, RST- 14.8.4.1046
MEI- 11.0.4.1186, IGPU- 15.40.19.64.4390

Other Thoughts: Looking over the reviews is sad, seems to be people blaming memory problems, or other addin hardware on the board, one was blaming the chipset on the board. At least newegg removed the tech knowledge level, as people were putting high when they had no clue. If you don't have a several memory kits, PSU, GPU, you shouldn't be building boards. Look at any MFG board and see that almost everyone has boards with poor records some of which are the people who build them. Every board made with the new chipset has the win 7 problem with USB.
There were some small problems when ASrock added SKY OC, but 2.60 has none.
***I'm not saying that there couldn't be a bad board, but usually it's not the board.***

Now Newegg needs to remove allowing people who didn't purchase the board from them to stop posting.

Pros: -Looks gorgeous
-Heat sinks really nice
-BIOS Interface easy and looks great

Cons: -Turned off after in BIOS for about 2 min and couldn't re-activate. Had to hard reset each time, power button didn't work nor did the reset button. Received a couple different Dr Debug codes, each relating to memory, eventually got stuck on code 19. Clearing CMOS and BIOS still didn't work. Looked it up and apparently this isn't that uncommon of a problem. Something to do with the south bridge is jacked up. There is no solution, everyone advised cutting your losses and getting a replacement board. I am turned off of ASRock now until they prove me otherwise. I bought a different brand board.

Other Thoughts: I really hate giving anything a 1 of 5 rating, but that was my experience. And it really sucks to get to the point of seeing your project come to life and it failing on you, only to find out it's a known issue. Maybe I'll give this brand another try one day, but I don't foresee it being anytime soon. Thank you New Egg for your understanding and refunding me so I can get another board.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued ASRock Customer,

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
For the future reference, please trouble shoot the mainboard whether the issue is resolved.
• Unplug the ATX power, clear the CMOS.
• Reseat the CPU and heatsink fan.
• Test with single memory module, switching another memory if problem still persist.
• Test with onboard video (remove the VGA card).
• Connect the monitor to onboard video.
• Plug the 24 + 8 or 4 pins ATX power.
• Turn on the power (using onboard power button) to check if its post.

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp
We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp

Pros: Looks great.
Plenty of storage option.
Overclocks well.
Good board layout. Everything is easy to get to- though some fan headers on the bottom of the board would have been nice.
Works perfectly on Linux out of the box.

Cons: LAN MAC address error on boot. I had to download a utility to change them. Shouldn't have to do this on a brand new product.

Attempted to update the BIOS using the internet upgrade option in the BIOS & after it restarted, it would not post, it just goes into a boot loop for a while, the sits with a code 19 error. I had to switch to the 2nd BIOS which works fine. I'm not sure if it's able to be fixed, as customer support have not responded to me after a week.

Other Thoughts: I would not recommend this product. The look suited my build perfectly & it does perform quite well, but when something goes wrong, you need to stand by your product & try to help your customers.

I'll be going back to EVGA & their fantastic service for future builds.

Pros: This is just a well rounded board.
My 6700K was recognized without issue.
I really love how ASRock ZIP ties their motherboards into a foam protective packing carrier placed inside the static bag which itself rests inside the main mobo box.
I have been VERY impressed with the reliability of this and every other ASRock motherboard I have purchased in the last couple of years. I personally own 6 ASRock boards (X99, three Z97's, one Z170 and a Z77 Pro. I have also purchased another 6 or more for friends or clients which I have also setup.
I really have to give ASRock credit in the BIOS department. Their layout is intuitive and easy to navigate. I have stopped buying another brand because of all the problems with multiple memory modules and just overall stability. Once again ASRock gets it right. My memory runs at it's rated speed without any special sub timing tweaks. Just set XMP and verify voltage and keep it moving.
I have not run into issues with combinations of PCIe expansion cards either. Sometimes cards either use up too much address space with their ROMs or cause other clashes with the MOBO BIOS. Not my ASRock. I can use PCIe x8 cards, sound cards, Host Bus Adapters (HBA's), RAID cards, etc.. without issues.
The extra case drive bay mounted front ports seem like a nice extra but I have no need for them in a HTPC chassis.
Oh and Thank YOU for using Intel LAN chips. Kudos.
High quality power stage and components.
Another will for ASRock

Cons: Not a single complaint....

I would like to see more attention put on electrical isolation of at least 1 USB port for external DAC use.

Other Thoughts: Setup:
nMediaPC home theater case
ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board (of course)
16gb (2x8GB) G.Skill DDR4-3000 RAM 15-15-15-35
Intel i7-6700k CPU
Coolermaster Gemin2 S524 ver 2 Lower profile CPU cooler
eVGA Supernova 750 watt Platinum P2 power supply
Samsung SW951 M.2 SSD (120gb)
Intel XF 99083 10GB/Sec fiber optic NIC
eVGA GTX 960
Samsung 65js8500 65" 4K TV
Elfidelity PWM fan noise filters
Asus Xonar Essence STX w/Muses02 Op-Amps
Gustard X20-U DAC
Logitech K830 backlit media center keyboard
Cyberpower CP1500PFCLCD sine wave UPS
Windows 10 x64 Enterprise

This is primarily use as a home Theater PC with a concentration on quality 2 channel Audio.
Windows 10 was chosen for it's quality audio playback.
All Windows 10 apps were removed and constant Microsoft telemetry (spyware) was removed or blocked. Fidelizer 7 Pro is also being used for further lessen Win 10 background processes and services. Foobar2000 is being used for audio and Xonar Unified 3rd party audio drivers for enhanced stability. XBMC/Kodi is used for Home Theater duty.

Much effort was made to keep electrical noise to a minimum hence the use of PWM fan electrical noise filters. No motherboard headers such as USB or front panel audio were used. No SATA connectors or even the built in NICs were used as to not have copper wiring that could introduce electrical noise. I chose a fiber optic NIC since fiber is immune to electrical noise.

Isolated USB power is of great importance for connecting a USB DAC (digital analog converter). Isolating electrical noise is VERY high on the list for audio playback as dirty power shows up a digital jitter causing brightness/harshness and poor imaging etc.

Pros: -Clean, easy overclocking menus
-Sharp design
-Great build quality
-Included 5.25" accessory for additional USB ports.

Cons: -None so far

Pros: Three gen3 x4 m.2 slots!!!! This was the major deciding factor for my purchase of this board. I dropped three 512GB Samsung 950 Pros in this and have 1.4TB of stupid fast storage without needing a single SATA or power cable for drives!
The black PCB fits well with just about any themed build, though the copper/goldish colored accents may clash with cooler colors.
Front panel, 5.25 bay USB type C is super handy with very very few cases offering this option yet.
TONS of fan headers! You get two CPU fan headers plus 4 chassis fan headers, all are 4 pin PWM capable. My build has two 360mm radiators, two 120mm chassis fans and a 200mm chassis fan for a total of 9 fans plus a PWM pump and I only needed two fan splitters for the radiators.

Cons: m.2 slots share lanes with the SATA Express slots, which is what the front USB type C panel uses, meaning you cannot utilize the nifty panel if you are utilizing all three m.2 slots.

RAID setup is not intuitive, and the instruction manual included is not very helpful in this regard. You have to set the SATA mode to raid, and OpROM policy to UEFI only, then enable the m.2 drives in the BIOS, then reboot. Once you are back in the BIOS after rebooting, you can access the Intel RapidStorage option to configure the raid. This should have been included information in the manual.

Other Thoughts: This is my first ASRock motherboard in a serious build. I've got one other machine using an ASRock micro ATX mobo running my PLEX server. I've been a pretty hardcore ASUS fan going back several builds, but have been impressed by ASRock's reported quality. The real selling point for me, however, was the three m.2 slots. ASRock seems to be quite ready to push the limits of what is possible on their boards, but still manage to stay stable. I've been quite impressed with this board in the couple of weeks I've been using it.

If you're looking to build a machine with crazy SSD speeds, this (or one of the other two top end Z170 boards from ASRock) is the ones for you.

Pros: everything is working great, sound is great,looks great, I did not use the front panel don't need it, ended up getting a couple of drawers instead,trying out windows 10 it just seems the way to go all programs from 7 is working great, it was a hard choice between this and another Motherboard that had sound blaster for audio some were having problems with it I think I made the right choice very happy with this Motherboard

Cons: A little confused as always connecting and what is neg. and positive of the wires for the front power button wires and so on but looking at case wiring book and Motherboard wiring book it was not that bad, A little confused also were the 2 sticks of memory would go had to look at book for a few min. scratching my head but not that bad and none of these are really cons at all

Other Thoughts: Rosewill Legacy QT01-B case Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB CRYORIG M9i Mini Tower Cooler and the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 will have to wait because me broke

Pros: Prior to mounting the motherboard in the case, the Noctual cooler and G.Skill memory were mounted to the motherboard. The Noctual cooler was installed with the long dimension parallel to the ram and the single fan on the side opposite the ram. In this position neither the ram or the nearest pci-e slot were blocked by the Noctual cooler. A second Noctual cooling fan on the ram side could be added however it would rest on top of a ram stick and as a result be positioned about 0.5 inch higher than normal.

It was easy to assembly the computer in the Fractual Design R5 case. All the standoff locations were labeled by motherboard size. The standoffs mounted in without incident. The motherboard easily mounted on the standoffs; however 2 of the screws adjacent to the rear edge were difficult to position in their holes, a magnetic screwdriver would have been helpful.

The case is designed with a cavity behind the motherboard tray which houses 2 SSD brackets and also hides the wiring. The motherboard tray has wiring openings around 3 sides. So it's easy to route power and sata cables behind the motherboard resulting in a very clean assembly.

The SATA motherboard sockets are edge mounted resulting in right-angle cable connectors being impractical. This was true in connecting a SSD mounted behind the motherboard.

Loaded Ubuntu from a flash drive. I selected a custom setup and created a GUID fat32 partition, Ubuntu ext4 partition, a windows fat32 partition, and a Ubuntu SWAP partition. Ubuntu seemed to install in just 2-3 minutes. Next I installed windows 10 from a flash drive. It took considerably longer. When booting I can press F11 to enter UEFI and choose the other operating system.

My computer is primarily used to develop web sites with Ubuntu, Eclipse, Yii2, MySQL, and Apache2 and listening to my music library or Pandora. This computer is replacing an old 2007 P35 Q6600 which has been moved to the basement for a music server and file backup. The audio from the Z170 computer is noticeably better than the old computer. The Z170 computer is very quite; you have to look at the lighted power switch to tell if it's on.

I use a Logitech K260 wireless keyboard and mouse. I recently added a Logitech c525 web cam. Both of these worked with Ubuntu 15.10; except there is no zoom control on the webcam

Update: Mar 11, 2016

I am not a typist; just an advanced hunt & peek user; but I had a hard time finding a keyboard that I liked.

I did not like the Logitech K260 wireless keyboard. There was no caps lock indicator and the keyboard would go to sleep and queue the keystrokes instead of transmitting them to the computer. Then it would wake up and send them .... sssssssss would result since you would repeat the key until it appeared on screen.

Tried the Logitech Mk700 wireless keyboard. It had less sleeping issues; but there was still some sleeping just not as frequent. It had a Caps Lock indicator. However; I had a hard time using it as the tops of the keys were not beveled, just rounded, resulting in less space between the keys. It was too easy for me to strike multiple keys at the same time.

I returned to an old wired HP 2359 keyboard. I prefer it over both wireless models.

The motherboard is working great. I'm waiting for a little more competition in the NVME SSD drives and then I will add one to this board.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Compoents:
ASRock Z170 Extreme +7 motherboard
Intel I7-6700K cpu
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4x8GB) ram
Fractual Design Define R5 case
Fractual Design Newton R3 600W Platinum power supply
Noctual NH-U14S cpu cooler
Samsung 850 EVO 2.5” 250 GB SATA III ssd

Logitech K260 wireless keyboard and mouse
Logitech C525 webcambr>

Dual boot Ubuntu 15.10 & Windows 10

Pros: -Seemed to perform as advertised in all areas
-easy debugging with Dr. Debug display and codes

Cons: -Defective item sent (native USB 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1 ports on the back of the mobo did not work and only one USB expansion would work at a time

Other Thoughts: Good Newegg customer service allowed me to return the defective item for a replacement. Waiting on the replacement now, hoping not to get a second defective item.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Colin,

Sorry to hear that the mainboard's USB ports are malfunctioned.
Please try below to check if its address the issue.
• Turn the power off, clear the CMOS.
• Test with USB keyboard and mouse under UEFI/BIOS to verify all USB ports are working.

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp
We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp

Pros: -The board is pretty.
-It has many features.
-The BIOS is gorgeous

The absolute difficulty in using this board has led me to learn a lot.

Cons: -The documentation is atrocious.
-The support team is awful. I expect an automated response to this review just like many others get with generic information I have already tried. I have sent a few e-mails. One e-mail was to respond to me after I got Win7 to install with their USB patcher one time, but it did not install any drivers. Win7 with no drivers at all. No USB recognized. No LAN recognized. It was a glorified calculator and notepad machine. They said I needed to use their USB patcher. You don't say? Tried it.
I also tried:
Buying a new DVD drive to install things
Learning ISO and burning to USB
Learning to Mount Virtual drives because their software doesn't support burning from the desktop (only external media to external media)
Figuring out I needed other software for that
Pre-downloading updates and patching Windows only to find that their software didn't work every time (so I have failed to install Win7 with the USB patcher to a disk about 10 times now on multiple computers)
Multiple failed installations including overcoming the initial attempt to install Windows from an ISO without the patcher and cleaning and formatting particular ways
Figured out the BIOS needed a FAT32 format to put files on it, but then the Windows wouldn't read the files on the USB storage because it didn't have USB drivers

I have spent about two weeks troubleshooting this. I've used 3 separate computers. I've used about 6 different programs and two different Win7 builds (one from a refurb disc I bought for this operation and another from a copy of Win7 I use on my build as just the ISO to download from the Win7 site).

I am still in the process of reformatting a drive the long way because the USB Win7 patcher has failed to write an ISO to my drive 4 times now with 2 different errors. I have used more than one USB drive as well. I am trying different possibilities, but this has been the most frustrating experience in building a computer to date.

The other saying that enabling the PS/2 emulator is what solved it for them. Mine has been enabled just to get the mouse and stuff to work inside the Window's environment (e.g. the installer).


Speaking of the board components, there are some people who are correct in stating that the M.2 slots will tie up 3 lanes for your SATA. You will also have to kind of diagram in it your book to figure out which ones become unuseable. I thought it was poor form to put it on separate pages in the book and not really diagram it very well. I highlighted mine with markers to make sure there was no interference when hooking everything up.

Other Thoughts: I would absolutely recommend you pick another board if you're planning to use Windows 7. I know many are like me and still like that classic feel, but smoothness of Win7. Windows 10 is okay, but it still has the "I'm going to force tablet styles down your throat" appeal of Windows 8. It's nowhere near as bad as 8, though.

I honestly cannot express how frustrated I am with their tech support. Another person stated basically that they have contacted tech support, received poor support, then the support obviously did not understand and never responded again. That is also my experience. ASRock's website is also a bit awful. Things are not clarified many times. I honestly wish I had just waited and ordered an XFX or EVGA board again.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Aaron,

We sincerely apologize that you having difficulty USB 3.0 ports and Windows 7.
The USB patcher had been tested and worked before released.
Because of Windows 7 does not build-in USB 3.0 drivers for Intel 100 series chipset, it needs to adjust BIOS setting (PS2 Emulator) or patch the USB drivers to Windows 7 installation media.
However, Windows 8/8.1/10 does not have this issue.
Please visit link below for USB keyboard and mouse with Windows 7 Installation Guide and USB Patcher.
Link: http://www.asrock.com/microsite/Win7Install/

For the M.2 slots and SATA ports sharing.
The information is on mainboard's specification under Storage section link below.
Link: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20Extreme7+/?cat=Specifications

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp
We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp