I bought this a s a replacement for an Asus board the sound chip had failed on. First of all its working fine and I have not had one problem with it in nearly six weeks since I bought it. It has ample Sata connectors and has a very good crossfire system that works extremely well. It runs my board processor with a 1 ghz over clock and is very stable with a couple of clicks of a mouse in the Bios and its really simple. I like the bios it works very well although I think the Asus is better but its still much better than a gigabyte board I recently setup which I hated as it was so clunky in comparison. The board looks cool if that matters to you with all its black and gold and heat spreaders, personally i couldnt care less what it looks like its in a box. I also think the price is ok for the spec and good value against its competitors. I did consider the extreme4 but for the little bit extra some of the parts are better quality read this review from someone who really knows their stuff[...]and you will see why its a great review and incredibly thorough so you will see what I mean.
What don't I like which is why it didn't get 5 stars. The board is a little thin if you compare it to a gigabyte board as they are quite substantial, but its not a huge issue but perhaps if you were using one of the huge CPU Air coolers such as some of the Noctua range it could be a weight issue but then I guess Arock have tested it out. I use a thermaltake 120M range with dual 120 fans its very efficient but quite a bit smaller than some of the Noctua range. The most annoying thing about the board and this would only effect anyone who Crossfired or ran an SLI system is the position of the extra power input when you are running 2 cards its just to the left of the CPU socket rather than on the edge of the board like it is with Gigabyte and its Molex rather than Sata power which is really annoying. wherever you route it it leaves you trailing a wire across the board even if you route it through the back as its almost in the middle of the board. Which means you have to be careful not to restrict air flow or more importantly not to foul up the CPU fans. Other than that I would highly recommend the board. As in all other respects its a really good board and works extremely well even updating bios is very simple in fact I would of given it 4.5 stars if I could have. The thickness may well not have any bearing at all and the Crossfire power issue doesn't prevent it from working or reduce its performance its just in a very silly place and should be Sata and most people will never use 2 cards together anyway although that isn't the point.Mind you if you can I run 2 MSI 7870 in crossfire they are brilliant and very fast and a lot more reliable than some of the reviews I've read.
Update 20/07/2014 The board is still running great and I use it a lot running intensive games, photo editing. I really cant fault its performance and its easy to overclock if you want. The sound is very good and in all respects so far a very reliable board with ample Sata drive connections. I have 1 SSD, 4 HDD + a DVD writer and they all work brilliantly. The extra USB ports are also very useful and can double up as an SSD bay as well which I didnt realise initially and bought a bay for my SSD.
Update: 20/08/15 Still running great now with 16 Gig and a single MSI 970 GTX GPU and CPU water cooling system. I have also upgraded to Windows 10 and no problems whatsoever with drivers etc etc, very impressed.
Update: 25/10/2016 after nearly 3 years the board started to have significant problems booting from power up too re-starting. After trying to resolve it and advice from ASRock it still wouldn't work. Although well out of warranty they offered to replace it with a brand new identical board if I paid for postage to return my board and for them to post a new one back total cost £25 and took approx 7 days to send to the Netherlands and get the new board back. You can't buy these boards now and are really difficult and expensive to get second hand. The service was excellent and I was quite frankly amazed they replaced the board so 10/10 for ASRock I wouldn't hesitate to buy another board from them. The new board is running brilliantly and has extended the life of my computer significantly and the extreme 6 models are great boards.
| Brand | ASRock |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 30.48 x 6.35 x 24.38 cm; 816.47 Grams |
| Batteries | 1 Lithium Ion batteries required. |
| Item model number | Z77 EXTREME6 |
| Manufacturer | AsRock |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Processor Socket | LGA 1155 |
| Memory Technology | DDR3 |
| Computer Memory Type | DDR3 SDRAM |
| Maximum Memory Supported | 32 GB |
| Memory Clock Speed | 1333 MHz |
| Graphics Card Interface | PCI, PCI Express |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of VGA Ports | 1 |
| Number of Firewire Ports | 1 |
| Voltage | 1.5 Volts |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Lithium Battery Energy Content | 1.5 Watt Hours |
| Lithium Battery Packaging | Batteries contained in equipment |
| Lithium Battery Voltage | 3 Volts |
| Lithium Battery Weight | 5 Grams |
| Item Weight | 816 g |
