ASRock Z170 Pro4 (Intel LGA 1151) Motherboard Review

The ASRock Z170 Pro4 enters the market as one of ASRock’s most affordable Z170 offerings, it’s not the most feature-rich of boards but bear in mind that it’s because it costs a lot less

Unlike the Gaming and Extreme series that costs some some 20% extra or more, the Z170 Pro4 is as simple looking as it is with much smaller heatsinks.

While the heatsinks are smaller, it’s good to see that ASRock still included the I/O Armor on the Z170 Pro4. Don’t under-estimate the Z170 Pro4 either because it still comes with a 10-Phase Power Design to ensure good power delivery.

Nothing unusual at the corner where DIMM slot resides, one thing to note is that the board comes with Nichicon 12K platinum capacitors.

One thing I dislike about this board is the SATA ports, I would very much prefer to have all of them face forward rather than upwards as seen here.

The Z170 Pro4 still holds quite a number of goodies in its feature list, like the Ultra M.2 32 Gb/s (PCIe Gen3 x4 & SATA3), the 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots (AMD CrossfireX only, x16 / x4 mode) and ELNA Audio Caps for better audio output quality.

At the rear, the I/O ports are

– 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
– 1 x DVI-D Port
– 1 x HDMI Port
– 6 x USB 3.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection (ASRock Full Spike Protection))
– 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
– HD Audio Jacks: Side Speaker / Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone

More details at the official product page.

User Experience

The board worked flawlessly out of the box, the small sized heatsinks meant that the board is much lighter compared to the higher-grade ones.

Below is the user interface of the UEFI on the Z170 Pro4. It’s a good to use interface, not the best but sufficient for any enthusiasts for fine-tuning purpose.

My only complaint about the board is the orientation for SATA ports. That aside, I do wish ASRock included POWER / RESET buttons and a debug LED for the Pro4 as that would’ve added more value to the product.

The Verdict

The ASRock Z170 Pro4 retails at around RM 620, that’s a HUGE price gap between it and the Extreme4 and Gaming 4 range from ASRock.

The only downside of the Z170 Pro4 would be the 3.0 x16 configuration as it does not support SLI while CrossFireX is limited to x16 / x4 – looks like it’s single card configuration for anyone using this board.