The ASRock Z170 Extreme4 was an impressive number, an excellent board for having good features at a solid price point.
The Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 on the other hand is another Z170 chipset based board from ASRock but targetting the gamer market.
It comes at a lower price point and what it has over the Extreme4 model are features like
– XXL Aluminum Alloy Heatsink
– PCI-E Power
– Fatal1ty Mouse Port
– Key Master
– Killerâ„¢ E2400 LAN
The board looks beautiful with bright red accents all over the place, most notable on the XLL sized aluminium alloy heatsinks.
While the XXL sized heatsinks look great, they’re not helpful at all when it comes to cable management.
If you look at the lower right corner of the image below, you’ll see there’s a 4-pin molex connector for PCI-E power. Should you ever require to use that, your cable will be laid over the heatsink (the one with Z170 word on it) and it’ll look downright ugly – literally “Function over Form” I suppose.
The Z170 comes with 10-phase power design and as you can see from the XXL heatsink does take up a lot of space and the board is not as wide as the Extreme4 model, meaning it has less real-estate for components.
Moving forward to the DIMM section, it is nothing out of the ordinary here but what I want to highlight is the placement of the connection point for CPU Fan 1.
In reference to the image below, the CPU Fan 1 connection is placed next to the clip of the DIMM slot, nearby the first PCI-E slot. CPU Fan 1 and CPU Fan 2 connections are placed on opposite ends of the DIMM slot of which I think is an awkward setup.
Another thing I didn’t like about the ASRock Gaming K4 is that the SATA ports are all upward facing. I very much prefer forward facing SATA ports for better cable routing.
There’s also no convenient buttons for POWER and RESET, no debug LED as well. If you’re into overclocking, I suggest skipping this board in favor of the Extreme4.
And here we have the PCI-E slots, interestingly the Gaming K4 does not support Nvidia’s SLI multi graphic card setup which I think is rather ironic seeing that it’s a gaming board.
Sandwiched between the PCI-E slots is the Gen3 x4 Ultra M.2 interface. The Gaming K4 also comes with ASRock’s signature Purity Sound 3 audio system.
Lastly we have the I/O ports, including USB 3.1 10 Gb/s Type-C port. There’s no Type-A port on this baby. 🙁
While we’re at the topic of I/O panel, I’d like to point out that the ASRock Gaming 4’s key features would be the
– Killerâ„¢ E2400 LAN
– Fatal1ty Mouse Port
– Key Master
The Killer LAN is claimed to be able to provide lower latency connection while being intelligent enough to prioritize data for applications.
The Fatal1ty mouse port allows user to customize mouse polling rate but this is subjected to the type of mouse used.
As for Key Master – this feature allows Sniper Mode where you are able to reduce the mouse movement speed to allow accuracy, while the Macro Key allows you to customize shortcuts for your commonly used keystrokes.
User Interface
Despite being a GAMER oriented board, the Fatal1ty Gaming K4 comes with a great looking interface and it comes packed with features for fine-tuning.
The Verdict
The ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 retails at RM 799, which is RM 60 less costly than the ASRock Z170 Extrem4.
I like both board and I think if you’re a gamer and know how to make use of Key Master and Fatal1ty Mouse port then that alone justifies going for the Gaming K4, not forgetting the supposedly better LAN port BUT it comes at the sacrifice of lacking SLI support which I don’t think is a very minor issue.
The Extreme4 model would be better if you’re gamer and you are also into overclocking, after all having the Power and Reset button on board and a debug LED makes it a lot more convenient through the trial-and-error process.
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