he cardboard box in which the Extreme4 motherboard from ASRock ships is provided with a plastic handle and contains on the frontal side some logos which represent the supported technologies:
On the back of the box we can see a photo of the mainboard with the components explained, and further down we can see the main board features listed:
The box content is split in two separate layers; the top one comes with the documentation, additional bundle and the bottom one houses the motherboard itself:
The motherboard bundle is composed of:
-4x SATA3 (6Gbps) cables
-1x USB 3.0 Front Panel
-1x 80-conductor Ultra ATA66/100/133 IDE Ribbon Cable
-2x MOLEX to Serial ATA HDD Power cables
-1x Rear USB 3.0 Bracket
-1x 3.5mm Audio Cable
-1x I/O Shield
-1x SLI_Bridge_2S Card
Also, we can find documents explaining the XFast USB feature, Virtu, how to install HDDs larger than 2TB, a Software Setup Guide, one Quick Installation Guide, along with a disk which contains the necessary drivers and applications:
Inside the Software Setup Guide, we get explanations on how to use the UEFI interface, along with the AXTU overclocking software in Windows:
The Quick Installation Guide lets us know about the main motherboard components and guides us on how to perform the installation to get a fully functional system:
The motherboard is wrapped inside an anti-static bag and for additional protection, the PCB is surrounded by a foam material frame:
Compared to the P67 Extreme4 motherboard, the Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 comes with a sightly modified color scheme, which, in my opinion, looks much better; now we have a grey/black color scheme, compared with the older versions that had blue and white colors for the connectors. The PCI-E and PCI slots are in the same positions as on the older Extreme4:
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