ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
This is our second Z390 motherboard from ASRock and we are very impressed. I would say that the Extreme4 series is the “all around” motherboard series from the company. It is not geared towards any specific group of people, but has features that anyone would enjoy. So this really is a board for anyone whether you are a gamer, overclocker, streamer, or just a general PC user.

When it comes to the Z390 platform this board has everything that you would want. You have support for multiple graphics cards, dual Ultra M.2 slots (one with an full-cover heatsink), USB 3.1, Gigabit Ethernet, and of course RGB. If you wanted to add a wireless module to this board it is quite easy to do as well.

I like the overall look of this board too. The black PCB with gunmetal accents looks great and is going to look great in any case. The RGB lighting that you get on the I/O cover, audio cover, and PCB heatsink is a nice touch, but is not over-done like we’ve seen on other motherboards. If you want to add more RGB you have two 4-pin RGB headers as well as a 3-pin addressable RGB header. All of which can be controlled by ASRock’s Polychrome SYNC software.

ASRock has beefed things up on this board compared to the Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac we previously reviewed. There is a 12-phase power design with 60A chokes, dual-stack MOSFETs, and Nichicon 12K Black capacitors. The power delivery components are covered by XXL heatsinks, which are far larger than the ones on the Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac. So we did not run into any throttling issues like we had with that board.

Overclocking on this board was pretty easy and again no throttling issues at all. We were able to take our Core i9-9900K all the way up to 5.1 GHz across all eight cores completely sable (albeit a little hot). This again is a testament to the quality components on the board and the larger VRM heatsinks.

There really is not much to not like about this board. ASRock’s motherboard companion software does still seems a little dated compared to others that are out there and if we are nitpicking the RGB on this board is not addressable, so you can’t do things like the popular “rainbow wave”.

Overall ASRock has put a lot of features into a very solid Z390 Extreme4. Right now it is selling at our favorite online retailer for $154.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard a 9 out of 10 score.

rating9 10

Pros:
– Multiple GPU support
– Dual Ultra M.2 slots
– Sleek design and RGB lighting
– 12 phase VRM with adequate cooling
– Great BIOS

Cons:
– Companion software seems a bit dated
– On-board RGB’s are not addressable

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