ASRock Impresses with 22 Plextor SSDs on Z87-Extreme11/ac

Image Source: TechPowerUp

To make a point, ASRock has decided to fully populate all of the storage connectors on its new Z87-Extreme11/ac motherboard. To do this, it has used a grand total of 22 Plextor M5 Pro SSDs. Six of these SSDs are connected through a SATA3 interface (standard on the Z87 chipset); 16 of them are connected through an SAS3 interface. Unfortunately, ASRock didn't configure the drives in any form of useful RAID array, so it was impossible to figure out any performance numbers.

Of course, just using 22 SSDs alone isn't enough. How could it be? On top of this, ASRock also connected four Radeon HD 7970's, filled up all the memory banks, and connected its own Wi-SD box. The Wi-SD box acts as the motherboard's WiFi and Bluetooth Antenna, has two USB 3.0 ports and a multi-card reader.

Let's not begin to imagine the sheer cost of this kind of setup.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • slomo4sho
    I need moar storage!
    Reply
  • kenyee
    And no one thought to measure power? Or boot Windows/Linux on it? FAIL :-P
    Reply
  • zeek the geek
    Lets show the world we can throw all this crap together and make it run, but not setup in a way that we can measure it's capabilities... Would be nice to see some Raid and Crossfire benchies on this... Comon ASRock you're trying to advertise, do it right!
    Reply
  • dogofwars
    Dear next 10 years budget.
    Reply
  • dingo07
    I bet there's no meaningful performance increase with all those drives... without substantiation (in the form of capability measurements) it really doesn't matter what they "connect"
    Reply
  • schnitter
    Needs cosmos s case to fit all this.
    Reply
  • Evolution2001
    This is silly. This is like building a car(?) with 4 engines and twin-turbos on each engine. Sure, it may fire up, but not knowing if everything works together in unison or is even a stable platform makes it nothing more than a show piece...all show and no go.
    This particular computer seems to be nothing more than Geek Art meant to shown and not actually used.
    Reply