The new Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 motherboard from ASRock comes with plenty of features and bundled applications, to make our experience with the latest Intel platform as pleasant as possible, without investing a lot of money.
From the main product highlights, we can enumerate:
-XFast LAN, which is a software application in charge of traffic prioritization or traffic shaping; -XFast USB which boosts the speed of our connected external storage devices;
-ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility, which helps with monitoring current temperatures, fan speeds, voltages or with overclocking; the same application allows us to save profiles on HDD and for load them later on;
-THX TruStudio for audio quality enhancement;
-MAGIX Multimedia suite for editing different types of content;
-Lucid VIRTU, which dynamically assigns tasks in real time to the best suitable graphics resource;
-Intel Smart Response Technology, for boosting the HDD performance when including a small SSD to act as cache;
-Digital PWM for offering more stable voltages when overclocking;
-Premium Gold Caps for longer life and stable performance.
Compared to the Z68 Extreme4 model, this one also offers next generation PCI-E 3.0 support, for the next generation of GPUs; this feature offers a higher bit rate, higher bandwidth per lane, higher efficiency and full backwards compatibility with the previous PCI-E 2.0 or 1.0 standard. However, to be able to use this feature, we must also have installed an Ivy Bridge CPU; till then, the PCI-E 3.0 slots will function only at 2.0 speeds.
The Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 also features an all black design for the connectors and slots, giving it a more professional look.
When overclocking the CPU at 4.8GHz, we could obtain stability at about the same voltage as we did with the previous generation Extreme4 board.
The ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 can be found in online shops for prices between 145 and 150 Euros.
ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Motherboard Recommended For:
I would like to thank again to ASRock for making this review possible!
If I may, when you guys are about to do a review on a product, can I suggest trying to do a little internet survey about potential problems BEFORE publishing your conclusions?
If you would have done that for the Extreme4 GEN3, you would have found very quickly a lot of forum posts about 2 major issues. I would like Asrock and/or you guys to comment about them:
1- Etron EJ168A USB 3.0 controller
Despite the fact this controller recently received the SuperSpeed USB Certification from the USB-IF, it is still plagued by problems such as random disconnect from external USB 3.0 hard drive. It also has issue with some web cam and other peripherals. Your USB device might work, or not. How would you like Russian roulette style USB connectivity with your brand new 185.00$ purchase?
Neither the latest 0.105 drivers or BIOS 1.10 from Asrock solved those problems. This is unacceptable for a brand new product. To Asrock defense, Gigabyte board with the same Etron controller have similar issues.
2- Integrated Intel video
Get this: If you use only the onboard video without a discrete card, the system reboot and/or crash randomly many time every day. According to Asrock tech support on those forums, the only current fix is to up de CPU voltage to 1.2V!!! This is an Asrock specific problem as I couldn’t find forum complaining about this from other vendors. Just Imagine someone not knowing about this major flaw and planning to use the Extem4 GEN3 with the onboard video only... Let the tech support / endless e-mail / multiple RMA begin…
Ramon