Whether it’s for gamers or content creators, a good board is something worth investing on and the ASRock Z170 Extreme6 is one such board – one that’s made with durability in mind and features not forgotten.
The board is unlike ASRock’s previous series of Extreme series boards that are blue in color, they’re now with a brown and black accent. The Extreme6 is pretty much like the Extreme4, the key difference being the Extreme6 has better power delivery with 12-Phase power design as opposed to the Extreme4’s 10-Phase, and the Extreme6 has 2 additional SATA3 ports (8 of them in total) while less 1 SATA Express port (2 in total).
The alloy heatsinks around the CPU socket are significantly larger than the Extreme4.
One thing I didn’t like about the Extreme6’s design is that the CPU Fan connection is placed quite close to the CPU. This might be good for the wire management but I feel that it may hinder the installation of heatsinks with heatpipes, of course this is subjected to the heatsink design.
Unlike the Extreme4, the Extreme6’s power buttons (POWER and RESET) are placed at the other corner of the board near the DIMM slots.
While I very much welcome the buttons, I do not like the placement. I have the Z87 and Z97 Extreme4 boards and the buttons are at the bottom corner, and the Z170 Extreme4 has the same placement as well. Arguably having the button on top makes it easier to access when one has a secondary graphics card, a large at that.
The Extreme6 comes with Debug LED which is certainly a plus point for any board.
The ASRock Z170 Extreme6 supports multi-GPU setup and it is able to run dual cards at x8/x8.
As always with ASRock boards, they come with 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec), Supports Purity Soundâ„¢ 3 & DTS Connect.
Last but not least, the I/O ports that includes 2 USB 3.1 10Gb/s (1 Type-A + 1 Type-C).
More details at the official product page.
It is worth highlighting that the board comes with the following features
– Extra large aluminum alloy heat sinks that effectively take away heat from the MOSFET and chipset so that your whole system may perform more stable.
– Premium 60A Power Choke making the saturation current up to three times better, thus providing enhanced and improved Vcore voltage to the motherboard.
– A combination of 820uF and 100uF capacitors for clearer, efficient and more responsive CPU Vcore power, and overclockers may achieve higher scores.
– Nichicon 12K Platinum Caps with lifespan of at least 12,000 hours.
– High Density Glass Fabric PCB for short-circuit protection.
– Hyper BCLK Engine adjustment for more range of frequency
– DDR4 Memory Overclock
