ASRock Z77 Extreme9 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel Z77 chipset is a single-chip solution that is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5).

The ASRock Z77 Extreme9 has four additional SATA-600 ports, controlled by two ASMedia ASM1061 chips (no RAID support).

One drawback is that the manufacturer used only two colors to identify the SATA ports: black for the SATA-300 and gray for the SATA-600. The manufacturer should have used different colors to identify to where each port is connected. The gray ports closer to the black ports are the two SATA-600 ports controlled by the chipset.

All SATA ports are located at the motherboard’s edge and rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them. See Figure 7.

Figure 7: SATA-300 (black) and SATA-600 (gray) ports

This motherboard also has one eSATA-600 port, which is shared with the “SATA3_A4” port, so they can’t be used at the same time.

The Intel Z77 chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. The ASRock Z77 Extreme9 offers eight USB 2.0 ports, two soldered on the rear panel and six available through three headers located on the motherboard; and 12 USB 3.0 ports, eight located on the motherboard rear panel and four available on two headers located on the motherboard, near the main power supply connector. The eight additional USB 3.0 ports are controlled by two EtronTech E
J188H chips (one of the chips controls the four ports available on the two headers and the other chip controls four of the eight ports available on the rear panel). The motherboard comes with a 3.5” panel containing two USB 3.0 ports for you to use on one of the motherboard’s USB 3.0 headers if your computer case doesn’t have four USB 3.0 ports with internal connectors. It is very important to understand that this box comes with the antennas for the Wi-Fi card, so you must install it.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme9 has two FireWire ports controlled by a VIA VT6315N chip, one located on the motherboard rear panel and the other available through a header.

This motherboard supports 7.1+2 audio format, i.e., eight channels plus two independent channels for audio streaming. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using the new Realtek ALC898 codec, which is an outstanding solution, providing an impressive 110 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 104 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, with 24-bit resolution. This means you are able to capture and edit analog audio (e.g., converting LPs to CDs or MP3, converting VHS to DVDs or any other digital format, etc.) with this motherboard without adding any background noise.

The motherboard has on-board optical SPDIF output. A header labeled “HDMI_SPDIF1” also provides SPDIF output for you to install a coaxial SPDIF output or to route digital audio to older video cards that require this physical connection in order to have digital audio output in their HDMI connectors.

The analog audio outputs are independent only if you use a 5.1 analog speaker set. If you install a 7.1 analog speaker set, you will need to use either the “mic in” or the “line in” jacks.

The portrayed motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports controlled by two Broadcom BCM57781 chips. These ports support the “teaming” function, which allows the two ports to be combined as one 2 Gbps port, if your network hardware supports this configuration.

In Figure 8, you can see the motherboard rear panel with a shared PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector, eight USB 3.0 ports, clear CMOS button, HDMI output, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port, one eSATA-600 port, one optical SPDIF output, and the analog audio jacks.

Figure 8: Motherboard rear panel