ASRock Z77 Extreme9 Motherboard

Conclusions

The ASRock Z77 Extreme9 is targeted to the sophisticated enthusiast, who wants to build a system based on an “Ivy Bridge” CPU with three or four video cards in SLI or CrossFireX mode and want all video cards to have the highest bandwidth with the CPU possible, i.e., accessed using the PCI Express 3.0 bandwidth, not the 2.0, and using at least x8 speed. This is possible thanks to the use of the high-end PLX8747 switch chip.

In addition, this motherboard is targeted to the user who understands the importance of the PEX8608 chip, another switch circuit from PLX. 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. This is especially important on this motherboard, as it has eight additional USB 3.0 ports, for a total of 12.

By the way, this is the first time we’ve seen a motherboard using both PLX8747 and PEX8608 chips 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), allowing you to use the on-board audio from this motherboard for professional tasks, such as audio editing.

In summary, if you are an enthusiast looking for the most “loaded” motherboard available for building the most high-end LGA1155 gaming machine possible, the Z77 Extreme9 is for you.

Of course, if you want to build a high-end system but are not obsessed with the actual bandwidth of the PCI Express x16 slots, you can pick a more affordable product.