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: Inexpensive. This got me an affordable rack case for my GNS3/Cisco lab It is a good size for my desktop 12u rack. I have other rack cases that are too deep and hold 15 drives. This is a nice size without being overwhelming. Construction is sturdy. The case body and handles are solid metal and do not flex.

Cons: Cheap By far my BIGGEST complaint is the noise from the fans. I sit in a small office full of computer systems and electronics and this thing overwhelms all of them. This is classic high pitch server room WHIR. I wish the case had more standard 80mm fans instead of the dual 60mm ones in the back. The front being 120mm is easy to replace with a quiet one. Motherboard mounting standoffs do not fit properly so I had to use my DeWalt drill and some sockets to force a post in the case. Not a huge issue for me but inconvenient.

Overall Review: If you need a quiet case case, this is NOT for you. I will likely not purchase another one because I will need to spend $30 more to replace the fans now. Really this case was not a good deal because of the extra expense so I can stay in a room with it. The USB ports are upside down so my 2 Logitech nano receivers are as well. Minor. The protecting paper on the smoked plexiglass door is still on the inside of the door. I suppose this offers both shipping protection and could be left on to block the light from the very bright green and red LED's.

Pros: 1 - Reliable 2- It's Reliable 3- Oh.... It's reliable 4- It's not a "SleazeGate" drive. I just installed a pair of these in my 2 servers (primary and backup) I always buy drives in pairs. I copied 300,000 files to the drives which filled them 80%. Just like the 18 other HGST NAS drives I own, I have had no issues with these drives

Cons: Quality drives cost more money. Buy it right the first time and only buy it once. Done.

Overall Review: I lost a few thousand dollars by populating my two 4U media servers with "Cheezegate" drives. When both servers became unstable (constantly freezing) I could not figure out why at first. Then I discovered HDSentinel software. HDSentinel showed me I had 12, yes 12 Seagate drives with bad sectors and failing. All of them were less than 2 years old. I threw them in the trash and purchased HGST drives. NONE of my HGST drives have ever given me a problem in 4+ years. I have at least 20 of them now. I have a couple of their 3TB drives, 8+ of their 4TB drives, probably six of their 6TB drives and now a pair of 8TB drives.

Pros: - High speed RAM stability - Wifi 7 - Great price - Superior build quality - Runs cool

Cons: Really there are NONE I can find. This is my 5th Z790 motherboard and the best so far.

Overall Review: This isn't even my main RIG. It is one of 10 machines I use at home/work (self employed) This is an upgrade to my i9-9900k ASRock taichi system I use strictly for Audio (sometimes video) in my man cave/he shed. I have been toying with the idea of updated this last system to to a DDR5 machine for a few months. When I saw the glowing reviews in a forum, I started reading up on this board. This seemed like a great fit for a build it and forget about it upgrade. I installed a 2x16GB set of G.Skill DDR5 7200 RAM, updated to the Z790-Nova-WiFi_3.03.BD04.rar 3.03 BETA BIOS in forums and set XMP. So far all is good. I also use a Thermalright socket 1700 contact frame and simple low profile AXP120-X67 cooler. This PC will never run at any significant work load so this cooling is more than adequate for what I am doing. Also using an eVGA Platinum 850 power supply and Silverstone home theater chassis. A simple 1070Ti video card is used. All I need is basic Samsung TV output currently at 1080p but a 4K TV might be a future upgrade to watch movies on. Again, all this machine does is play FLAC audio files via external DAC or watch home server based video using a KODI front end. Boot drive is a 1TB Samsung 990 Pro. Video is ASUS 1070ti ROG. CPU is i7 14700K. RAM is G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5RK. An external DAC is used via dedicated isolated USB 3.0 PCI Express card.

Pros: It worked for a little while

Cons: Died after 2 years and 5 months

Overall Review: Kicking out 4d error codes Took out a Ryzen 9 3900x CPU with it. Other parts are now working in new Z790 motherboard Done with AMD and rethinking ASRock Requested RMA from ASRock since board supposedly has a 3 year warranty. Warranty is somewhat worthless since most cannot be without a computer for a month.

Pros: absolutely NONE

Cons: Motherboard died in less than 45 days

Overall Review: There was a loud POP and it was dead.

I will not order another one of these for any of my clients in the future. The main ATX power supply to the motherboard is inches TOO SHORT. I had to flip the power supply over upside down and cut the chassis with a jig saw to make this supply work. There is absolutely no excuse for charging this kind of money for this specialized supply only to cheap out on 50 cents worth of wire. Just awful!!!!!

I ordered this in the morning. It ships the same day and a few days later it shows up late after traveling around the country. I bought several brands of paste to try in my shop. I don't like wasting MONEY on overnight shipping. I don't like wasting money, period. I cannot say that I recommend this over any other brand. MEH

I have purchased several of these. They are inexpensive and work with all versions of Windows 7, 8.x, 10, and Kodi (XBMC) This order from CE Compass took so long to receive I had forgot I ordered it. VERY slow shipping. Weeks!!!