ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I must admit that as an I.T. professional who has been around and tinkered with small computers for 30+ years this is my first personal ASRock board. As the owner of a small PC service company I usually do no use ASRock boards either. I have no particular bios against them. There have just always been other companies higher in my selection process.
Getting started I will say this board comes expertly packed with foam surround zip tied at the 4 corners. Nice attention to detail. +1 ASRock. There is so much one of these little boards could be used for. I chose to replace my LARGE bedroom home theater PC (x58 gaming tower) with a small but powerful and quiet system. I started with this motherboard. It is small but has everything (and then some) I could want. I have this installed in a Cooler Master Elite 120 M-ITX case. I replaced the front fan with a temp sensing blue LED 120mm Enermax Everest Advance case fan. This board has 2 fan headers. I have 3 fans so it helps that the front 120mm has a temp sensor as I used a Molex adapter to power it. I had a new i7-4790k 4.0GHz “Devils Canyon” CPU overnighted the day they came out. I capped the CPU with a Cooler Master GeminII M4 CPU cooler and MX4 thermal paste. This CPU runs 4GHz stock and is serious overkill for home theater for sure but I only want to do this once. No regrets here. Using my Cooler Master case I had to juggle what I plugged in and connected first. CPU goes in first then 16 Gigs of G.Skill 2133MHz Ripjaws DDR3 (max for the board). Now the CPU cooler goes on because of the overhang the RAM will not come out once the cooler is installed. A bracket bolts up from under the motherboard so my RAM, CPU cooler and CPU have to be installed with the motherboard out. (not so with the wimpy stock Intel CPU cooler). I used a Rosewill Gold Rated 450 watt Capstone power supply. I used max RAM so that I do not need virtual memory with my Samsung EVO SSD. This is a media center PC so very little in the way of software will ever be installed other than XBMC media center software.
This build went extremely well, almost 100% flawless. I had this motherboard a full week before the i7-4790k was released but the system powered up fine. I had connected an Ethernet cable to my LAN and went in the UEFI and ASRock has a built in mechanism to update the firmware right there via LAN. The update performed flawlessly and gave official 4790k support. I cleared CMOS and loaded defaults. The only quirk I found and a previous review pointed out that if I set max RAM for Shared Video, the system hangs and refuses to boot. I tried this 4 or 5 times with the result being a frozen system until a reset. I left it on auto.

Cons: UEFI does not allow selection of MAX video RAM without freezing system.

Could use 1 more fan header.
Only time will tell the reliability tale so I will wait
ASRock may make my "A-List" yet

Overall Review: I loaded Win 8.1 Pro x64 with Media Center. Loaded Chipset, wireless, LAN, Intel RST, and MEI software. I also use the original SSD tweaker to turn off virtual memory, hibernation and a dozen other things that shorten the life of an SSD and are not needed with 8+ gigs of RAM. There were about 2 gigs of Windows update patches that needed to be downloaded and applied to Win 8.1. Wow. I got my go to antivirus and malware scanner and automated imaging software installed too.
The Samsung EVO is not the fastest SSD but I do not care. I picked the Samsung EVO for price and reliability. I use a pair of 840Pros for my main workstation. I am truly amazed with this little board, CPU and SSD combo. It takes only 8 seconds from the moment I press the power button until I am looking at a fully loaded Windows 8.1 desktop. Sweet Zombie Gesus!!!!! I am not a fan of tiles so I use iobit Start Menu 8 to give me my desktop back. Luv it!!!!
I am using my favorite home theater keyboard, a Bluetooth Microsoft Entertainment Desktop 7000. I love this keyboard!!! It is full size keys for my fat fingering. I love the shape and built in mouse keys on the left and touch pad on the right. The ASRock motherboard has built in Bluetooth 4.0 and wireless AC. I do not use the wireless because I am accessing my movies from a file server and wireless has too much lag. The Bluetooth must use the same Antennae as the Wifi because it does not work beyond a foot without the external Antennae. The built in Blue tooth works better than Microsoft’s USB transmitter ever did. My mouse and keyboard are much faster and more responsive now. Thank you ASRock.
This system is connected to my 240Hz Samsung TV and my Logitech Z5500 surround speakers with a digital S/PDIF optical connector. I will eventually upgrade to a Samsung 8000 series Quad HD TV in the next 24 months as the prices are tumbling rapidly. It is my understanding that the 4790x HD4600 graphics supports 4k TV. I will make that judgment when I get one. My downstairs media center PC has a new 750ti super clocked Maxwell GPU and totally kills some Blu-ray material powered by and i5 CPU. This ASRock board has a full x16 PCIexpress slot and my Cooler master ITX case support full length double width Video cards.
Yes, ASRock has executed this form factor with perfection. They have created a board as rich as any I have seen with features:
ITX form factor, 16gb max RAM, x16 slot, SATA 3’s & M.2 for storage, Intel LAN chip, Wireless AC + Bluetooth, supports latest CPU’s, high end sound chip and capacitors, 8 pin P4 CPU power connector, USB and 1 P/S2 connector….Oh MY!!!!

ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac
Cooler Master Elite 120 advance case
Intel i7-4790k 4GHz Haswell CPU
Rosewill Capstone Gold rated 450Watt power supply
Cooler Master GeminII M4 CPU cooler
Enermax Everest Advance 120mm blue case fan
Samsung 840 EVO SSD
G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 2133 RAM 16GB(2x8)
Microsoft Entertainment Desktop 7000 keyboard and mouse
Logitech Z5500 speaker

Pros: For the price, this board packs a lot of great features and a recent chipset.

If you are going for the blue-silver look, this board is a strong candidate to consider.

Cons: WiFi manufacturer aka Broadcom. While I am sure that they make good chips which actually work, the one that came with my board is impossible to get going under Linux. After doing some research on the net, I learned that this problem has persisted for about a year. Why use the ubiquitous Intel for Ethernet and Broadcom for wireless on the same board?

On Windows, everything works well. If you plan to use this machine with Linux, beware! At this point, I may need to look for another chip that surely works with the penguin. Without sounding too much like a jerk, I think that at this price point I should not need to do so.

Lastly, the Antenna design on this is simply - how should I say it - well, lame.

Overall Review: It is a good product, but hiccups like the one described above certainly subtract from it.