ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

A sweet looking board, ASRock Z270 Extreme4 strays again from their usual design and it is now in white. The Extreme4 on Z87 was black, then blue on Z97 and now it’s white.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

On the upper corner here is a huge I/O cover with RGB lighting, nice power phase layout and no obstructing large heatsinks around.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

Over here are the DIMM slots, nothing out of the ordinary but there seem to be 2 USB 3.0 connectors.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

Over this side we have the LED lit heatsink, forward facing SATA ports and pin connectors. What I noticed is that the POWER + RESET button and debug LED are now missing. 🙁

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

The board comes with 2x Ultra M.2 slots which is great as you can now use multiple M.2 storage.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

On this corner – the Purity Sound 4 and steel plated PCI-E slot for reinforcement.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

Lastly here are the I/O ports at the back that includes 2x USB 3.1 Type C and Type A ports.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

Here’s the box for the ASRock Z270 Extreme4

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

Below are the packaged contents.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

User Experience

The board proved to be stable, absolutely no problems as I tested it out with the Core i5-7600K.

The UEFI interface should prove to be familiar if you are an ASRock board user.

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

What I’m disappointed about ASRock Z270 Extreme4, other than the lack of certain buttons and indicator, is the lack of detail about the Aura RGB LED lighting.

Not only nothing was mentioned in the manual (digital and print), the software to control the RGB lighting wasn’t even included in the CD of which I think is ridiculous – how could one put a feature on the box yet not mention it in the manual nor provide a software for it?

ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

I had to request the software from ASRock just to get it running, and sad to say the feature shorted my NZXT Hue+’s strip while the LED strip from China seems to work fine, albeit being incapable of matching with the ASRock Z270 Extreme4 LED colors.

The ASRock Z270 Extreme4’s LED lights up 3 areas – the I/O cover, the Purity Sound word and the chipset heatsink. The problem with it is that all 3 LED exhibit a slightly different shade, meaning they are inconsistent in producing colors even though on software you assigned them the same colors. It works fine with red, green and blue but try it with less common colors and you’ll see the flaws popping up. It looks like you have to fine-tune them individually with the RGB dial should you have OCD when it comes to color matching.

Check out my video review for the LED output.

The Verdict

The ASRock Z270 Extreme4 retails at around RM 940 and comes with 3-years warranty, and sad to say that it is a disappointing product. I’m truly disappointed on how the lack of thought was put into the features, presentation and packaging. The Extreme4 range gained beauty but lost its soul, maybe it’s time I look into the Gaming K6 model instead.

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