ASRock Z77 Extreme11 Motherboard

Conclusions

The ASRock Z77 Extreme11 is probably the most complete motherboard for “Ivy Bridge” processors that money can buy. However, it is not just a matter of coming with lots of features; this motherboard is targeted to users who understand how these features were implemented.

One of the highlights of this motherboard is the presence of three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots––not only two like most motherboards based on the Z77 chipset. Also, because of the PLX8747 switch chip, they support x16/x0/x8 or x8/x8/x8 configurations.

The presence of eight additional SATA-600/SAS-600 ports is another highlight of this motherboard. Most importantly, the chip used, an LSI SAS2308, is connected to the system using a PCI Express 3.0 x8 connection, allowing all storage devices to achieve high performance even when they are accessed at the same time.

This motherboard also comes with a dual-band Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n card, which achieves higher performance than single-band models. The motherboard also supports Bluetooth 4.0.

In addition, the motherboard has 12 USB 3.0 ports.

In order to properly accommodate the additional devices, the board makes use of a PLX PEX8608 switch chip. This chip automatically switches the available PCI Express lanes to the devices that need them. On motherboards with too many PCI Express devices without a switch chip, you need to manually disable devices on the motherboard setup in order to achieve full performance on devices connected to the USB 3.0 and SATA-600 ports when transferring files at the same time.

Also noteworthy is the high-end audio codec used by this motherboard, the Realtek ALC898, which provides very high signal-to-noise ratios (110 dB for the outputs and 104 dB for the inputs), i.e., non-noticeable background noise.

The only negatives we see with this motherboard are the voltage regulator circuit, which uses a hybrid design instead of a digital one, and its price. Costing USD 400, it isn’t for the average user.