ASRock Z87 Extreme6 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I bought this board Summer 2013, still going strong. It was cheap and had heaps of features. 10 SATA? Sweet. I actually use 8 of them. Bios updates. UEFI Bios works great.

Cons: I don't think it has a working WOL, but not a big issue.

Overall Review: Intel Core i7 4770K w/Noctua NH-D14 32GB DDR3 1333 Ram (partitioned with 20GB RamDrive) XFX Double D FX-787A-CDFC Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB (Raid 0) SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB (Raid 0) Seagate 7200.14 3TB ST3000DM001 (Raid 5) in a SilentMaxx HDD Enclosure Seagate 7200.14 3TB ST3000DM001 (Raid 5) in a SilentMaxx HDD Enclosure Seagate 7200.14 3TB ST3000DM001 (Raid 5) in a SilentMaxx HDD Enclosure Seagate 7200.14 3TB ST3000DM001 (Raid 5) in a SilentMaxx HDD Enclosure SAMSUNG Black 12X BD-ROM Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G Nexus Edge Full Tower SeaSonic X750 Gold 3 X U3011 (3 X 30" Dell 2560 X 1600 = 7680 X 1600, 12MP) Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit) Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard Logitech Performance Mouse MX

Pros: 2xPCI, 10xSATA3, Audio, UEFI Bios at this price point, cannot be beat.

Cons: Freezes at Asrock boot screen occasionally (not overclocked) - needs hard reset to complete bootup (I am on BIOS 1.40 which is the latest as of this review.) Does not come with a COM port cable for the COM port header on the mobo.

Overall Review: Overall, this is a great mobo for the money. I got it with a free stick of 8Gb DDR3 Crucial, so if you are not in a hurry, you may want to wait for Newegg to run this or a similar promo. My setup includes an i7-4770K, a Noctua NH-D14, 16 Gb of Crucial DDR3, a 512GB Vertex 4 SSD, a number of HDs, an LG BluRay Burner, and an Asus DVD-Rom. Installation was a breeze. It fit perfectly into the Rosewill Blackhawk case. Everything aligned perfectly. The cpu and chassis fans plugged into the motherboard. There are 3 PWM 4-pin fan connectors, and 2 3-pin fan connectors. The mobo controls the fan speed via PWM only on the 4-pin connectors, so if you install a 3-pin fan on a 4-pin connector it works at full speed only. It will control the speed of a 3-pin fan only on the 3-pin connectors (via fan voltage). I wanted all my fans running at full speed, so this was not an issue. After installing all of the hardware, I went into the UEFI bios and selected all of my settings. I updated the BIOS through the UEFI interface so I was running BIOS 1.40 before I even installed Windows. I decided not to overclock for a few weeks until I got a taste for the overall system stability running at spec. I will overclock in a few weeks once I get an idea of how it should run. I ran the optical drives to the Asmedia chip, and the SSD and HDDs to the Intel chip. I set up a RAID mirror, which worked easily. I installed Windows 8 on the SSD, and installed all of the drivers from the ASRock website. A caveat is that you cannot use the ASMedia drivers on the ASRock Extreme6 website. They crash Windows 8 64bit. Get the newer ones off of the ASRock Extreme9 website, and all will be fine. The rest of the website drivers worked great. I really like the build quality, feature set, and overall usability of this Mobo. I think that an experienced builder would have no issues getting this to work as advertised. Finally, the price/performance cannot be beat.

Pros: Cost effective. Legacy PCI slots; Good layout. Fast

Cons: Could use a better BIOS background

Overall Review: I had two E8400 Core 2 Duo systems that have been working very well for the past 4+ years. I bought the Extreme6 primarily because of it's slot layout. Despite the onboard 1150, I wanted to use my SoundBlaster X-Fi Extreme Gamer cards. I also wanted to leave an open x16 connector in case I wanted to SLI in the future. This board layout gave me everything I was looking for at a very reasonable price. I paired these with a Core i5-4670, 12GB memory and GTX 670 and 770 video cards. Both systems are incredibly fast. I only have a few of my games re-installed so far but what I have up and running is silky smooth. The gaming action is fluid. I am very impressed with Haswell so far. In the first few hours of running, I did experience 2 hard hangs. After updating all drivers to the latest versions, I have not had any further hangs and both boards have been running solid for over a week now. I did have one snag with DIMMS. More than a year ago, I bought 2x4GB and 4x4GB DIMMS of G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-xGBXL thinking I would upgrade to Sandy or Ivy bridge. I ended up waiting for Haswell. When I got my Extreme6 boards, I noticed these modules were not in the tested memory list but since I had them, I was going to try to use them. I put 12GB (2x4GB+2x2GB) and they worked perfectly. So I bought a another set of 8GBXL's to use with the remaining 4GBXL's and that resulted in a post code 53. I'm sure the ram chips changed on the modules so I just ran with one set of 8GBXL's in the second board and it's running fine. None of this is the fault of the board. I guess my main point is to watch out mixing older DIMMS with newer even tho they are from the same vendor and are the same part number. This is my first experience with UEFI and I love it as compared to the legacy BIOS interface. I really love the online BIOS update. Just a few clicks away and no hassles. I wish the BIOS had a better background than the twinkling stars. It looks cheap. But that's just a nit. I was concerned that my old Enermax PSU wouldn't work with Haswell but it's working fine. I don't use S3 so I shouldn't run into the .5A compatibility issue. All in all -- I am very happy with the Asrock Extreme6. It is fast, inexpensive and has a good layout for what I wanted. 2 systems: Core i5-4760 w/stock HSF Asrock Z87 Extreme 6 One with 12GB G.Skill 8GBXL + 4GBXL One with 8GB G.Skill 8GBXL (Z87 Compatible sticker on the package) One with Nvidia GTX 670 One with Nvidia GTX 770 Enermax 600w EG701AX-VE(W) PSU

Pros: Excellent 1150 audio codec, 2 USB 2 ports (you need those to do native install from a thumb drive, USB 3 ports need drivers and with a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port you have that line anyway so why not get them?) good layout of ports and reasonable power circuit and at the time I didn't see problems with drivers that ASUS seemed to have (this was a major error and so I am not sure I would make the same choice now though they are equivalent products) Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO fit nicely on the motherboard and cleared the G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series without trouble so onboard layout was good.

Cons: It started when I carefully checked everything over before assembly. I had read of bent pins and so was nervous when I gently opened the protective cover. I looked in and nearly had a heart attack, there was a glint. I got out my high power light and the glint disappeared and reappeared depending on angle. With a puff of compressed air it disappeared. It was a flake off the chromed CPU retaining bracket. That flake could have introduced an occasional and nearly untraceable short, but now it was gone. That it had been there at all was scary and totally preventable. Next assembly and power up. Started the boot cycle then blank screen and not even a beep code, video code or led. After a frustrating seven or so of these with fear chasing my mind in circles, reformatting and changing the HD and attempting a new win 7 install (I saw that it was freezing just before loading drivers but I couldn't see fast enough which ones). I got out the laptop, went to ASRock website and loaded all the drivers onto a thumb drive. I installed all on to the hard drive (the vaunted Easy Driver Installer didn't work). After installing the updated drivers and updating the ROM I still couldn't contact the internet, though I could get windows installed. I went into Control Panel, drilled down to the device driver level and went to the Ethernet ports and found that neither were installed despite the install program saying that they had been. I manually installed them and suddenly the Easy Driver installer took over and redid everything I had just did. Sigh. A day later the Gigabit controller crashed, but there are 2 LAN ports so I just switched to the 2nd one. Since then I have had only 1 BSOD, but that has not repeated and I am currently chasing the possibility it might have something to do with the MSI video card drivers. I have been building computers since 1987 and there were 3 times I was tempted to send this board back as defective. That should never happen. I give credit that ASRock is working on updating drivers and even came out with a new one 3 days ago, but there have been multiple generations of these corrections, not just one or two. That they keep at it is great, that they have to is troubling. The front panel ports are way the heck down on the bottom left as far away from the front as you can get, but I managed to get it to work and this is not an uncommon problem with multiple board makers.

Overall Review: Because of so many driver problems I have not attempted any OC at all, despite getting a i5-4670K. I do enjoy the audio codec and it seems so far to be well implemented. I really want to like the board and if doesn't crash again in a month I will permit myself to really like it, but stability is a make or break issue on a computer, so as I said in my title, I approve, but Provisionally and if after a few months, I might update my number of eggs. Good Luck ASRock, I am praying for your programmers :)

Pros: Pretty much everything I expected.

Cons: I steered away from some of the other options like the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H because they weren't using the superior Realtek ALC1150 audio chipset and were missing an onboard headphone amp powerful enough to drive my Sennheisers. Unfortunately ASRock placed the new Purity Sound stuff right in the line of the primary PCI-e port. The notch on my Galaxy 650 ti (N82E16814162127) doesn't clear it and is making contact. I can't tighten the GPU hold down all the way in fear of doing damage. MSI's Z87-GD65 looks like it avoids this problem. Other than that, this is a solid 5 egg board.

Overall Review: Upgraded from the 880g chipset to get SATA 6gbps and USB 3.0. Paired with an i5-4670k with lots of overclocking options.

Pros: Wanted 10 SATA 6 ports on the Z87 and this is the cheapest one. Works like a charm haven't had any problems. I did have a strange glitch when I hooked up the CPU fan to the MB pins and it didn't power the fan. Disconnected it and reconnected it, then it worked. Make sure your CPU fan is spinning!

Cons: Only one year warranty, hope it lasts at least 3 years!

Pros: * MASSIVE I/O options. Quite possibly going to be using all of the headers eventually upon my obtaining the I/O brackets, panels, and equipment. * Stupid number of options for overclocking. Wishing I didn't need the VT-d instruction set that the non-K version of the 4770 has. * iGPU option allows for both the Intel video chipset to be in use at the same time as the discrete. Thinking of setting up a KVM so I can run everything off of the Intel chipset while mining on the ATis while still allowing for the ease of gaming.. * Dual BIOS chips. Handily used this option tonight when adding in the molex PCIe power boost and having a boot failure issue that was rectified by booting in the backup and again in the normal. * BIOS is complicated but awesomely lacks little outside of thorough documentation. Don't boot into it initially with headphones.

Cons: * The SLi/CrossFire molex adapter will NOT work in the Fractal Define R4-series case unless you're willing to bend the flange just above the PSU and utilise a shaved and flipped 90-degree molex adapter. I think it may work in their R2-series due to the lack of this flange and extra room below it. Why molex and not SATA? Very few PSUs have 90-degree molex these days in comparison to SATA... * SATA I/O are flimsy but lock in well. * Primary 24-pin PSU connector would be better placed at a 90-degree. * Forward USB 3.0 connection is easily loosened.

Overall Review: * Update the BIOS to to the latest version. 1.0 was buggy and the latest has eliminated all of the freezing issues that I noted. * I've yet to use the ASMedia SATA chipset so as to reduce the latency. * Using Intel's GPU drivers. ASRock is a bit behind yet still. Initially to offload some of the load on a nVidia 620 due to the tri-head display and now to relieve the miners. * Download everything else from the website outside of what only the CD has. I have noted increased stability and speed with the updates. * Stay away from XFastLAN/cfossspeed! * Purchased 2 June 2013.

Pros: - Works just fine with Windows 7, no complaints (read the Cons if you're on Linux). - The connectors seem to be nicely laid-out for cable management. - This was one of the easiest boards to install that I've ever seen. - Don't read too much into my Linux-related cons below, none of this happens if you're on Windows.

Cons: As of 9/23/2013... There's a ton of problems with the board that you'll see if you're on Linux for whatever reason, including but not limited to the following - SATA ports are flimsy, so you may get lots of ATA errors and hardware resets (windows hides these, but silently slows down if it happens); - the BIOS is one of the most counter-intuitive things I've ever seen, so expect to put a little effort into finding things in there; - SATA ports on the board get in the way of installing large graphics cards (SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 7970 was tricky to install); - on-board HDMI Audio is not yet supported by most distros (though I've read on the news that Intel is working on it); - ASMedia SATA controller just doesn't work with most distros; try not to plug anything into these; - something is wrong with CPU C States support, at least with Haswell 4771. Not sure what exactly yet, but if it goes into a power-saving mode, it may not come back; Basically, either you need a very fresh kernel (try arch, gentoo, etc.), or it may not work (ubuntu, centos, etc.) At least, not out of the box. None of this is the manufacturer's fault, since I guess it is a product for Windows, and I had no problems there (other than the SATA slowdown and my 7970 card not fitting in/scratching SATA ports due to the layout).

Overall Review: If you enjoy messing with computer hardware, you should totally get this motherboard. If you don't care about any of this and just want something that works, look elsewhere. I will recommend this board to friends who run Windows. The rest of you, have fun! Funny, but I will not be returning or replacing this product, even given the flimsiness of the SATA ports and cables. I've also learned so much about computer hardware trying to get it to work that I actually have to thank ASRock for it! (btw, I'm not being sarcastic at all.)