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Firstly, we are pleased to report that our Roccat Kone XTD mouse worked to its usual standard in the ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac motherboard's UEFI BIOS. ASRock's board was able to provide intermittent support for the Leetgion Hellion mouse that we also tested; sometimes the mouse would function correctly and other times it would not.
Despite the multitude of controllers found on the Z87 Extreme11/ac, ASRock's board did not take a noticeably-long period of time to POST or enter the BIOS.
The main page of the BIOS provides basic information regarding the system.
Many of the main system voltages (such as CPU VCore, Cache, Input, and DRAM) can be configured to either fixed values or offsets. Some of the voltage settings deemed less important are limited to offset configurations which is slightly disappointing.
For example, a user with fast RAM who wants to increase the CPU System Agent voltage is forced to use an offset rather than simply key in a value. It isn’t a major issue, but it does given the feeling that some control is being taken away from the end-user.
ASRock provides users with a good amount of frequency tweaking options. Automatic CPU and memory overclocking profiles are built into the motherboard, but whether or not they operate with stability will be hardware dependent.
ASRock’s Z87 Extreme11/ac provides good flexibility with DRAM settings, including dividers of up to 40x, although no current LGA 1150 processor will support ratios that high.
The Advanced page is used to configure the operation of onboard devices and controllers. Settings relating to the Thunderbolt 2 ports and LSI SAS controller can be tweaked via their own sections.
Many of ASRock’s convenient features, such as Instant Flash and Easy Driver Installer, are found in the Tool section of the Z87 Extreme11/ac motherboard’s UEFI BIOS. A system browser is used to highlight some of the components attached to the board and is particularly useful for diagnosing faulty hardware, such as a broken memory stick.
Only three overclocking profiles can be saved on the Z87 Extreme11/ac motherboard. As we have pointed out time and time again on ASRock's high-end motherboard's, this simply isn’t enough; at least five should be provided. Hopefully ASRock will fix this with future motherboards or BIOS updates.
The H/W Monitor page provides temperature and voltage readouts as well as access to fan control parameters.
ASRock has implemented its tried-and-tested UEFI interface on the Z87 Extreme11/ac. This is generally a good thing as the interface is well laid-out, provides plenty of options, and is stable.
ASRock definitely needs to provide more slots to save overclocking profiles, though. The ability to save three different BIOS configurations is not enough on a high-end motherboard designed to operate in a number of different usage states.
The range of adjustable voltage, power, and frequency parameters is perfectly adequate, although a greater emphasis on user-led control would have been preferred with some of the voltage settings (System Agent voltage, for example).
Superb review and what a hell of a motherboard, out of my price range, but I agree, its a masterpiece of engineering prowess!
I hear a lot of negative press about asrock, being ‘cheap’ etc, but in recent years its completely changed. I own a Z77 asrock board and its been rock solid, and holds a good overclock. I would buy them again. This is a fully loaded mobo, thats for sure!
Its a good point, Haswell on a core per core basis and clock per clock basis is actually Intels’ ‘fastest’ chip. better than the 4960x etc.
I haven’t read all of the review yet, but it looks to be mighty impressive, with a price tag to match. Good review indeed Luke.
Z87 good chipset. Extreme mainboard