Reader review: ASRock Z370 Extreme4 Motherboard

Throughout December and early January, we ran a series of giveaways for our readers. There was only one catch- we wanted winners to get back to us with their thoughts on the prizes they won. So far, we've had quite a few winners get back to us and today, I am pleased to share Wesley Michel's review of the ASRock Z370 Extreme4 motherboard with you all.

Wesley has two reviews, one in video form and another in text. You can watch the video below:

And below is his full written review. Do note that if you can't see any of the images below, then Adblock may be preventing them from loading in. Disabling it and refreshing the page should fix this.

As the new year began, and everyone was saying “new year, new me”, I was thinking along the line of “new me, new PC”, so while I was window shopping for parts, KitGuru allowed me to win the Asrock z370 Extreme4, which of course will come very much in handy for my soon to come new build.

As I was unboxing the board, I noticed a lot of nice accessories, which are listed below, but of course the star of the show here is the board itself!

Box contents:
– 1x Asrock z370 Extreme4 motherboard
-1x Quick installation guide
-1x Software setup guide
-1x Case badge
-1x CD (drivers, Norton antivirus trial, utilities, Google Chrome)
-1x SLI bridge
-1x I/O shield
-2x 2 Sata 6.0GBps cables
-3x 1 M.2 drive screw
-1x Post card.

Now let’s get to business. On first sight this motherboard looks like a beast, It has a rough and mysterious look with it’s black and dark grey colors.

Moving onto the motherboard features, as you can see it has 4 RAM slots, with a maximum capacity of 64GB up to 2666Mhz, which are overclockable up to 4333Mhz, a standard 24 pin power connector for the board, 8 pin CPU power connector and a 1151 socket CPU slot which supports only 8th generation Intel CPU’s (coffee lake). For people who aren’t really a computer wiz, this means it only supports CPUs in the 8000 series (i5 8400 for instance), anything lower, like the 7000 series, won't work even though they are also Socket 1151.

Looking away from the CPU slot, you will find a few coffin shaped aluminum covers, those are the (extra large) aluminum heatsinks covering the MOSFET and chipset which are providing more stable performance. Again for the non-computer wiz out there, it’s basically the part that regulates the voltages for the important components such as CPU, GPU, and so on.

As we look further onto the board we see it has 3 PCIe 3.0 x16 and 3 PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, which for the crazy guys out there, supports Nvidia SLI, or AMD 3-way CrossFireX.

Since we’re talking graphics, let’s take a look at the I/O options for integrated GPU users. Directly on the board, you'll get D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI connectivity options. Via the iGPU HDMI you'll get a maximum resolution of 4K at 30Hz. With DVI-D and D-Sub you'll be able to pull out a maximum resolution of 1920×1200 at 60Hz.

As we move further along the rear I/O there are five USB 3.1 Type-A slots and one USB 3.1 Type-C port. There is an Ethernet port, all the usual audio slots and an old PS2 connection for legacy compatibility with older peripherals.

On the board itself you will find eight SATA 3 6Gbps ports and two M.2 Gen 3 ports, providing you more than enough for your HDD and SSD needs.

Now for the cooling fans out there (pun intended) the standard CPU fan connector supports a maximum output of 1A (which comes down to about 12w), the CPU optional water pump header supports up to 1.5A (18w), as for the chassis optional water pump fan it also comes down to 1.5A (18w) of fan power.

Visual fans may rejoice as well, the connector caps as well as the northbridge both come with RGB LED’s, which gives that little extra touch to an already awesome piece of gear, also the connector caps have a intimidating look that comes with it, the only sad part for me is that they are made of plastic instead of metal, but that aside, the board also comes with the already standard 12v RGB connector for all your LED requirements.

So to my conclusion, the only thing left to be said, is that with this motherboard you will have everything you need and more, she looks like a beast and performs like one. Also if you know where to shop, you will be able to find this beauty for about 150 dollars, so you can compare it to buying a Bugatti for the price of a Volkswagon, you’ll have way more than what you payed for, And I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot of coffee lake builds running this baby.

KitGuru Says: Thanks to Wesley for sharing the review with us. We'll hopefully have a few more reader reviews to share with you all before the end of the month!

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