ASRock Shows Off Three Motherboards for Enthusiasts
Not one to miss out on a party, ASRock was at Computex in Taipei last week with a host of new technology. Among the products on show at the company's booth were three LGA 1155 motherboards, the X79 Extreme 11, the Z77 OC Formula, and the Z77 Extreme6/TB4.
First up is the X79 Extreme 11, which boasts two PLX PEX9747 chips for seven PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and can run 4-way SLI or CrossFireX in x16/x16/x16/x16 mode. It comes equipped with an LSI SAS2308 chip for SAS (eight ports), Broadcom Dual Gigabit Ethernet (with Teaming), a Ceative SoundCore 3D audio chip, a 24 + 2 power phase design and USB 3.0 front panel and USB 3.0 back bracket.
Next is the Z77 OC Formula, an overclocking-orientated mobo developed by world champion overclocker Nick Shih. Based on an eight layer PCB with 4 x 2 of copper, the board features a high density CPU power connector, reducing power loss by 23 percent and heat by 22° K. It packs a twin heatsink that works as a standard heatsink with 40 mm fan or doubles as a waterblock (comes with connectors), a 12 + 4 phase DigiPower VRM, four memory slots, dual channel memory (supports DDR3-3000+) and USB 3.0 front panel and USB 3.0 back bracket.
Lastly, there's the Z77 Extreme6/TB4, which features a four channel (Cactus Ridge 4C) Thunderbolt controller driving two ports, each port with 10Gb/s of bandwidth and capable of driving six devices. It boasts two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, 7.1 HD-Audio (Realtek ALC 898) with THX TruStudio, and comes with two free TH cables, as well as a USB 3.0 front panel and USB 3.0 back bracket.
For full specs, check the tables below:
| ASRock Boards Technical Specifications | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chipset | Form Factor | Socket | Power Phase Design | Mem | PCIe | PCI | |
| Z77 OC Formula | Z77 | ATX | LGA 1155 | 12+4 | 4 DDR3 3000+ (OC) | 2 PCIe 3.0 x16 1 PCIe 2.0 x16 2 PCIe 2.0 x1 | n/a |
| X79 Extreme 11 | X79 | CEB | LGA2011 | 24 + 2 | 8 DDR3 2400+ (OC) | 7 PCIe 3.0 x16 | n/a |
| Z77 Extreme6/TB4 | Z77 | ATX | LGA 1155 | 8 + 4 | 4 DDR3 3000+ (OC) | 2 PCIe 3.0 x16 2 PCIe 2.0 x1 | 2 |
| ASRock Boards Technical Specifications | |||||||
| Audio | SATA | RAID | USB | LAN | IEEE 1394 | Lucid Vertu MVP | |
| Z77 OC Formula | Realtek ALC 898 7.1 Ch, THX TruStudio | 6 SATA3 4 SATA2 | 0/1/5/10 Intel RST, Smart Response | 10 USB 3.0 12 USB 2.0 | PCIe Gigabit Ethernet | n/a | yes |
| X79 Extreme 11 | Creative SoundCore 3D 7.1 Ch, THX TruStudio PRO | 8 SAS/SATA3, 2 SATA3, 2 eSATA3, 4 SATA2 | Intel SATA: 0/1/5/10 Marvell SATA: 0/1/10 | 8USB 3.0 14 USB 2.0 | 2 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet (Teaming) | 2 | yes |
| Z77 Extreme6/TB4 | Realtek ALC 898 7.1 Ch, THX TruStudio | 4 SATA3 1 eSATA3 4 SATA2 | 0/1/5/10 Intel RST, Smart Response | 6 USB 3.0 8 USB 2.0 | PCIe Gigabit Ethernet | 2 | yes |
*Quad SLI and Quad CrossFireX refer to a combination of two dual-GPU boards. 4-way refers to four actual boards.


C'mon guys...
C'mon guys...
My English not good enough. I may make grammatical mistake so I am not fixing it.
I may be wrong, but I only count 4 PCIe-3.0 x16 slots and it specifically states 4-way SLI on the board, not 7.
The fact it supports 4-way SLI has no relation to the number of slots. Most probably it does x16 if up to 3 add-in cards are detected and x8 if 4 or more. As evil as marketing goes a pair of "open" x1 slots also allow quad CF and quad SLI.
The article states that it only supports 4-way SLI/Crossfire. However, with this board and liquid cooling you could have the 4-way SLI, uber fast PCI-e 2.0 x4 slot SSD, 10gb Ethernet and heavy duty fiber channel RAID card with external 24 disc RAID 60 array.
It was their budget brand. Now they are an independent company. They seem to be selling both budget and enthusiast boards. Their focus is mostly on OC and pcie lanes while Asus usually goes for tons of features.
You can't do more than 4 way sli/cf period. Nvidia and AMD do not support it. That said, you could have more than 4 gpus, just not in sli/cf. It could be useful in a gpu compute scenario though.
I'm not familiar with Teaming, could someone explain?
The other boards are also great.
Basically lets two or more ports be used as a single connection with the combined bandwidth of the ports in the team. IE two GbE ports could be used as a single 2GbE connection.