ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 Motherboard Review

Where do I start? This board has been a real pleasure to work with. With the onboard power, reset and clear CMOS buttons this board is really geared for the enthusiast market. This board’s UEFI BIOS was very easy to use and navigate within. It’s one of the nicer UEFIs that we’ve seen so far. ASRock even future proofed this board with support for PCI Express 3.0 support. This feature won’t be accessible until Intel’s Ivy processors come out.

There are just so many outstanding features that this board incorporates and its performance is just outstanding. With more and more options becoming available in this chipset it’s nice to see a company step up to the plate and give consumers an exceptional choice like this for a reasonable price. Of course we’ll have to wait until Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors come out to fully realize what these boards are capable of, until then though these boards still stand out against the competition. It’s going to be interesting with all of the new processors that are about to hit the market. This should mean that we’ll get to see some price drops on older units. This is something that always adds up giving consumers an advantage.

With Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors hitting the market soon it’s good to have the ability to see these boards now. ASRock has really made this board a great product to have for these upcoming processors. This is one of the most feature rich boards that support the Ivy Bridge processors. When you take into account the performance that this board achieves it’s easy to see why we like it so much. You get a great looking board that performs just as well as it looks. Enthusiasts will be very happy to have this in their arsenal once Intel’s new processors drop.

To be picky the only issue I see with this board is that it’s still using a legacy Molex connector to provide extra power to the PCI Express lanes. I would have liked to see them use a SATA power connector for this. I’ve seen this done on another board and it really looked nice. Having a Molex connector located just above the top PCI Express expansion slot just detracts from the look of the board. I like that it, along with all of the other power connectors are in black; it just would have been nice to see them use a more updated power connector. I know that I’m kind of being picky here, but there really aren’t any other things that I didn’t like about this board.

For all of the features and the price that this board retails for, you really can’t go wrong by using this in your next build. This board stood out in so many ways that there is no doubt that it qualifies for our coveted Editor’s Choice Award here at Motherboards.Org. ASRock has continued to demonstrate that they are committed to delivering enthusiast level products at a reasonable price. When you look at the number of boards that are being offered with this chipset and at the price that they are being offered at, this board isn’t cheap. ASRock has made sure though that you really will get your money’s worth.