Peachy Value, Tons of Features

Both new Asrock motherboards impressed us for a few skillful reasons. Out of the box, I thought in that location was no way they would be sub-$200 motherboards, just as it turns out they can both be had for well nether that price with the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 set at $170 and the Z270 Extreme4 at merely $150.

We were particularly impressed with their audio solutions, dual Ultra M.2 slots, USB iii.ane Type-C and Type-B, Intel LAN, Nichicon 12K black capacitors and reinforced PCIe slots which also improves EMI shielding. Given how similar the boards are overall, the Z270 Extreme4 is conspicuously the meliorate bargain, but we wouldn't talk y'all out of buying the Fatal1ty model either.

Each comes in a adequately consummate package with all the 1000.2 screws yous'll need including a tertiary for the Wi-Fi adapter, should y'all buy i separately. Both motherboards also ship with a high-bandwidth SLI bridge, and so that's a huge bonus for those going SLI as this can cost northward of $xxx to buy separately.

Another large plus is Asrock'southward UEFI BIOS pattern, which in my opinion is one of the best out there. The BIOS is easy to navigate, looks peachy, and makes overclocking expressionless simple. Manually bumping our Core i7-7700K up to four.9GHz was a 2-stride procedure and Asrock's overclocking presets as well worked well.

There'south still a piffling room for improvement only null major. I'd much rather drop the dated VGA output in favor of a DisplayPort connector. Of course, these boards will likely only be used with a discrete graphics card, but DisplayPort makes more sense than VGA nonetheless.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Asrock Z270 Extreme4 on Amazon
  • Asrock Z270 Extreme4 on Newegg
  • Asrock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 on Amazon
  • Asrock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 on Newegg

Overall, given the relatively low cost, Asrock has crammed these boards full of quality features. As mentioned earlier, the Z270 Extreme4 impressed us the most given its better value and I wouldn't expect at that place will be many other Z270 boards that are then well rounded at the $150 price point.

Pros: Quality structure and sharp aesthetics at a competitive price with plenty of features including dual Ultra M.2 slots, USB 3.1 Type-C/B, and premium integrated sound.

Cons: Nosotros'd merchandise the VGA connector (and fifty-fifty the PS/2 port) for DisplayPort. The Fatal1ty lath slips a bit value-wise.