ASROCK Z170 EXTREME6 USB 3.1 MOTHERBOARD

The Extreme7+ will only be sold as a plus version, meaning that each board will come with that USB 3.1 front panel. The design of the Extreme7+ is also a little different to several of the others. The 12-phase power delivery and four slots of DDR4-3600 are normal enough, but the PCIe layout needs a bit of explaining. The top full length slot is x16, which is then followed by a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the chipset.

Then we get a PCIe 3.0 x8 from the CPU, and then a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the CPU as well. This technically gives an x8/x4/x4 arrangement from the processor, but with that chipset based slot in the middle between the main x8/x8, we can get a two-card SLI configuration plus another full length single slot device between them without breaking SLI.

To add something else into the mix, we again have three M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 ports between the PCIe slots and a half-size mini-PCIe slot for a WiFi card. Storage, aside from the M.2, comes from ten SATA 6 Gbps ports which incorporates three SATA Express ports as well – one of which we can use with the USB 3.1 front panel bundled. If you look closely at the image above, one of these SATA Express ports sticks out of the board.

For controllers, the Extreme7+ comes with dual networking in the form of an Intel I219-V and an Intel I211-AT, covering the modern Jacksonville controller and a cheaper model. The ASMedia ASM 1142 provides USB 3.1-A and USB 3.1C on the rear panel, and the system’s audio comes through the enhanced Realtek ALC1150 regime again. Elsewhere on the board we get a total of eight USB 3.0 ports (2 headers, 4 rear), eight USB 2.0 ports (3 headers, 2 rear), a COM port, TPM and onboard buttons.