ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard Overview
Taking a first look at the Z390 Extreme4 it is a normal ATX motherboard and ASRock has gone with a black, grey and gunmetal theme. So you have a black PCB with some grey streaks across it with the heatsinks on the board being gunmetal and the I/O cover being black. Overall it is a good looking board.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

Starting at the CPU socket this board of course has the Intel LGA1151 socket. Intel Z390 boards support both 8th generation and 9th generation Intel Core processors. There is a 12 phase VRM that conditions the CPU. ASRock makes use of some pretty premium power delivery components on the board like 60A chokes, dual-stack MOSFETs, and Nichicon 12K Black capacitors. All of the power delivery components are covered by ASRock’s XXL aluminum alloy heatsinks.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

In the top left corner of the board you’ll find your 8-pin EPS connector as well as an extra 4-pin. Moving over on the other side of the large VRM heatsink is your CPU fan header and optional CPU fan header.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

Coming to the right side of the board there are four DDR4 DIMM slots that support up to 64GB of DDR4 4300+(OC) memory. These modules are not metal reinforced that we’ve seen on other boards. They do however have closed bottom locks so you’ll be able to change out your memory without having to remove your graphics card. Along the edge of the board is your 24-pin ATX power connection, two USB 3.1 gen 1 headers, and a USB 3.1 gen 2 header.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

Unlike many Z390 motherboards that only have six SATA 6GB/s ports this board has eight. Two are powered by the ASMedia ASM1061 controller and are labeled SATA_A1 and SATA_A2. The remaining six are powered by the Z390 chipset.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

At the bottom of the board is where you’ll find the rest of your connections and headers. So from left to right you have your HD audio header, addressable RGB header, two 4-pin RGB headers, Thunderbolt header, 4-pin fan header, TPM header, COM port header, two USB 2.0 headers, front panel headers, and another 4-pin fan header.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

ASRock is using their Purity Sound 4 audio solution on this board, which leverages 7.1 channel audio and the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec. Most of the audio components on the board are covered by the extension of the I/O cover, but we can spot the Nichicon fine gold series audio capacitors.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

Moving on to the expansion slots the Z390 Extreme4 features three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, and 3 PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. It has supports NVIDIA NVLink SLI as well as AMD CrossFire. With a single card installed it will run at x16 speeds and when you have two cards installed they will both run at x8 speeds.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

There are two Ultra (PCI-Express 3.0 x4) M.2 slots on this board. The first sits above the top PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot and supports M.2 SSDs up to 80 mm. The second is below the second PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot and is covered by an integrated heatsink. The one supports larger 110 mm M.2 SSDs. There is also a WiFi M.2 slot for an optional WiFi module. There is also a final 4-pin fan header right above the top M.2 slot, so you have a total of 4 headers not included the CPU fan header.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

Finally coming to the rear I/O we have a combination PS/2 port, two USB 3.0 ports, DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI, two USB 3.0, two USB 3.1 (1x type-A, 1x type-C), Gigabit Ethernet, and our audio connections.

ASRock Z390 Extreme4 Motherboard

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