ASRock Z270 Extreme4 Motherboard
On Board Peripherals
Contents
The Intel Z270 chipset is a single-chip solution, which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip has six SATA-600 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). Four of these ports are shared with the M.2 slots.
The motherboard also offers two more SATA-600 ports, controlled by an ASMedia ASM1061 chip.
The motherboard comes with the six ports, all of them installed on the motherboard edge and rotated 90°, so the installation of video cards will not block them.
Figure 6: the eight SATA-600 ports
The Intel Z270 chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports and ten USB 3.0 ports. The ASRock Z270 Extreme4 offers six USB 2.0 ports, available through three headers located on the motherboard. There are eight USB 3.0 ports, four on the rear panel and four available through two headers. There are also two USB 3.1 ports, one Type A and one Type C, controlled by an ASMedia ASM2142 chip.
The ASRock Z270 Extreme4 does not support FireWire or Thunderbolt ports.
All the audio section is physically separated from the other circuitry by a line that reduces the interference and helps the audio section to achieve its nominal signal-to-noise ratios. All the capacitors on this circuit are audio models from the Japanese manufacturer Nichicon. The analog audio outputs are independent and the motherboard also comes with an on-board optical SPDIF output. There is also a TI NE5532 op-amp for earphones.
Figure 5 shows the audio section of the motherboard.
Figure 7: audio section
The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by an Intel I219V chip.
In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with four USB 3.0 ports (blue,) a shared PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector, VGA output, DVI-D output, HDMI output, one USB 3.1 Type C port, one USB 3.1 Type A port (light blue,) one Gigabit Ethernet port, optical SPDIF output, and the analog audio jacks.
Figure 8: motherboard rear panel