ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+ Motherboard Overview
Taking a first look at the motherboard we can see that it stands true to the colors of the Fatal1ty brand with a black PCB with red, black, and white accents. The board does have an I/O armor on it that goes over the rear I/O as well as the audio section of the board.
Starting at the CPU socket we have the Intel LGA1151 socket which of course support the latest Skylake processors. Around the CPU socket are the power delivery components. The board features a powerful 12-phase all digital power design which makes use of premium 60A power chokes and Nichicon 12K Platinum caps. Compared to traditional chokes, ASRock’s premium 60A power chokes effectively make the saturation current up to three times better, thus providing enhanced and improved Vcore voltage to the motherboard. Nichicon 12K Platinum Caps offer a 20% longer lifespan and provide more stability and reliability than other capacitors used in high-end motherboards. The power delivery components are covered by two heatsinks that are connected by a heatpipe. At the top of the board you will find the 8-pin EPS connector. Right below the CPU socket are the 4-pin CPU fan header and optional CPU fan header.
Moving over to the side of the board we have our four DDR4 DIMM slots that are color-coded for dual-channel operation. This board supports up to 64GB of DDR4-3866 memory. The memory slots also have no locks on the bottom end so your memory is easy to remove and install if you already have a graphics card installed. At the top corner of the board are two 4-pin fan headers. Moving down you have power and reset buttons, your 24-pin ATX power connection, a third 4-pin fan header and a USB 3.0 header. It is great to see power and reset buttons on the board!
Moving down the board to our storage connections, which are at a 90-degree angle we have four SATA 6GB/s ports and two SATA Express ports. Remember that if you don’t plan on using the SATA Express ports that opens up four more SATA ports, giving you a total of 8 SATA 6GB/s ports. The top two SATA ports are powered by the ASMedia ASM1061 controller, while the rest of the ports are powered by the Intel Z170 chipset.
At the bottom of the board you will find the rest of your headers and connections. From right to left you have a clear CMOS jumper, front panel headers, a 4-pin fan header, three USB 2.0 headers, Thunderbolt header, TPM header, COM port header, and HD audio header. There is also a POST code display on the bottom of the board. I like this location because if you have this board installed in a case it is hard to see the display if it is at the top of the board.
As far as expansion slots go you have three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots and three PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. The x16 slots will run at x16 / x8/x8 / x8/x8/x4. The board has support for Quad-SLI and Quad CrossFire. In between the first and second PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots is an Ultra M.2 slot (PCI-Express 3.0 x4) which supports M.2 SSDs up to 110mm in length.
Along the far end of the board is the audio section of the board. Most of the components are covered by the board armor, but we can see the Nichicon Fine Gold Series audio capacitors sticking out. This board features ASRock’s Purity Sound 3 audio solution which gives you 7.1 CH HD audio with Realtek ALC1150 audio codec, Pure Power-In and other technologies to deliver the crispest sound effects.
Moving on to the rear I/O we have a PS/2 port, six USB 3.0 ports, clear CMOS button, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, Gigabit Ethernet (Killer E2400), two USB 3.1 ports (Type-A / Type-C) and your audio connections. The first USB port (the one right under the PS/2 port) is the Fatal1ty gaming port. It will set the polling rate of your mouse to 500 Hz, which is the preferred polling rate of Fatal1ty. You can also use the F-Stream application to adjust the polling rate from 125 Hz to 1000 Hz. It is also great to see a dedicated clear CMOS button on the rear I/O. While you do have the jumper on the board having the button is easier and since it is on the rear I/O it is much easier to access.
