Asrock Z270 Extreme4 & Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 Review

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Kick starting 2017, Intel's Kaby Lake processors brought minor performance improvements to Skylake on what might as well be described as factory overclocking. Unfortunately, just about everything down to the IPC performance remained unchanged.
It could be argued Intel's accompanying 200-series chipsets saw more notable upgrades than the CPUs themselves, but even those were essentially limited to a few extra PCIe lanes and support for Intel Optane Technology.
Making the release more exciting, board partners including Gigabyte and Asrock launched alongside some drool-inducing motherboards. Since then, Asrock has sent half a dozen new Z270 motherboards our way, so we thought it was about time we looked at a few of them. Starting with the Z270 Extreme4 and then we'll check out the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 which we previewed in our Kaby Lake review.



Both boards feature similar layouts and designs, but we're betting there's more that separates them from Intel's standard spec as Z270 Extreme4 is priced at $150 and the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 is $170 -- not the highest-end models but also not entry-level, so we're keen to see what's hiding under the hood.



Asrock Z270 Extreme4
For a $150 motherboard sporting Intel's flagship chipset, the Z270 Extreme4 seems quite feature packed and it's certainly no eye-sore either. The black PCB has been branded with a large white X which obviously points to this being an 'extreme' series motherboard. The design is very cool and the X ties in with the chipset heatsink and I/O cover. Of course none of this is really important as it doesn't improve performance, stability or reliability, it just looks cool and most PC enthusiasts will appreciate that.



Moving past the Extreme4's makeup, we find a rather substantial feature set. The sound hardware alone is comprised of Nichicon fine gold series audio caps, a 120dB SNR DAC with differential amplifier, a TI NE5532 headset amplifier for front panel audio supporting up to 600 Ohm headsets, isolated PCB shielding, individual PCB layers for the right and left audio channels, 15μ gold audio connectors and support for DTS connect, courtesy of Asrock's built-in Purity Sound 4 audio solution which takes advantage of the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec.



The networking support is basic but not low quality. The board features a single Gigabit LAN port and it's connected to the Intel I219V chip for Wake-On-LAN, Lightning/ESD Protection (Asrock Full Spike Protection), Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az and PXE support.
There are plenty of USB 3.0 ports onboard as well as a few USB 3.1 (10Gb/s) ports. Asrock has also included the ASMedia ASM1074 hub which provides an additional USB 3.0 header. The I/O panel includes a USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C port and I will talk more about the I/O panel connectivity shortly.



Other unique features include a premium 45A power choke, memory alloy choke (Reduces 70% core loss compared to iron powder choke), Nichicon 12K black caps (100% Japan made high quality conductive polymer capacitors), Asrock Intel 4-Layer Memory POOL (Planes on Outer Layers) Technology, steel PCIe x16 slots and Asrock Full Spike Protection.



The storage setup is also basic for a Z270 motherboard, though the Z270 Extreme4 still boasts half a dozen SATA 6GB/s ports and a pair of M.2 ports, Ultra M.2 ports in this case. The M.2 ports support type 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 devices using either the SATA 6Gbps or PCI Express Gen3 x4 (32Gb/s) interfaces. Additionally, Asrock has included an ASMedia ASM1061 chip for an additional two SATA 6Gbps ports.
Rounding out the features worthy of mention are 15μ gold contacts for the DIMM and PCIe slots, a pair of AMI UEFI BIOS chips with multilingual GUI support (1 x Main BIOS and 1 x Backup BIOS), along with the M.2 slot (Key E) supporting type 2230 Wi-Fi/BT modules.



Around at the I/O panel we find a single PS/2 port support for either a legacy keyboard or mouse, four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 ports, VGA, DVI, HDMI, Gigabit LAN, five audio jacks and a S/PDIF port. Please note that the Type-C port only supports the USB 3.1 interface and not Thunderbolt 3. For Thunderbolt support users will need to purchase Asrock's Thunderbolt AIC card separately and only one card is supported.
Asrock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6
Having explored the 'Extreme' model, let's see what Asrock has whipped up for gamers with its Fatal1ty brand series. The Fatal1ty Z270 Professional Gaming i7 is the king of the hill for the LGA1151 socket but it's also upward of $200 so we felt the Gaming K6 version was better priced for comparison with the Extreme4.



The gaming-oriented features include SoundBlaster's Cinema3 software and an extra Intel Gigabit LAN port, but beyond that we have what looks to be essentially the same motherboard with a different color scheme. Truth be told, even the audio solutions are virtually identical, the gaming model just adds support for Creative's software to provide greater control over your sound.



The additional wired network connection is handled by the Intel I211AT chip while the Intel I219V is also being used again. Wi-Fi isn't included out of the box with this board either, but Asrock did add an M.2 Socket (Key E) supporting a type 2230 Wi-Fi/BT module.



Gamers thinking about buying this board have to ask themselves if having an extra Gigabit network connection and Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 3 support is worth an additional $20.

BIOS & Overclocking
Upon entering the BIOS, the EZ Mode loads first and presents basic information and options such as the processor type and frequency, memory related information and system vitals such as operating temps, voltages and fan speeds. Both the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 and Z270 Extreme4 look virtually identical at this point and it isn't until users hit F6 for the advanced mode that things start to look a little different.





Although the advanced menus and options are the same for both boards the Gaming K6 has been branded with a Fatal1ty themed BIOS while the Extreme4 is less red and more blue. In either case most of the fun will be had in the OC Tweaker menu though they are some useful things in the Advanced and Tool menus as well.
Here's a look at some of the menus and options found within the Asrock UEFI BIOS...















When it came time to overclock I jumped into the OC Tweaker menu, set the CPU ratio to "All Core" and then raised the CPU's clock multiplier from 42 to 49. After that I entered the Voltage Configuration sub menu and set the voltage mode to fixed and then applied 1.33 volts. After that it was simply a matter of saving the changes and rebooting the system.



Now in Windows, we hit a 100% stable overclock of 4.9GHz on the quad-core Core i7-7700K processor and this same frequency was achieved by both of Asrock's Z270 motherboards.

General Performance
Skylake System Specs
Intel Core i7-6700K (4.0GHz - 4.2GHz)
Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero
EVGA Z170 FTW
Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7
MSI Z170A Gaming M7
Asrock Z170 Extreme7+
Supermicro C7Z170-SQ
16GB DDR4-3000 RAM
GeForce GTX 1080
Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1TB
Silverstone Essential Gold 750w
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Kaby Lake System Specs
Intel Core i7-7700K (4.2GHz - 4.5GHz)
Asrock Z270 Fatal1ty Gaming K6
Asrock Z270 Extreme4
32GB DDR4-3200 RAM
GeForce GTX 1080
Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1TB
Silverstone Essential Gold 750w
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
There isn't much point in testing gaming performance or even application performance really as the motherboard doesn't impact anything here. That said, we ran the Excel benchmark and took a look at memory performance. The focus will be on the audio performance along with the boards latency.



The Z270 boards were tested with slightly faster DDR4 memory giving them an edge over the older Z170 motherboards in the SiSoftware memory bandwidth test. The Core i7-7700K processor which was used to test the Z270 boards is also clocked slightly higher than the 6700K.



Again the higher clocked 7700K is able to provide the Z270 motherboards with a performance advantage and both the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 and Extreme4 allowed for the same completion time of three seconds.



For the RightMark Audio Analyzer tests we connect the line out to the line in using a short six inch 3.5mm to 3.5mm high-quality jack, turn the OS speaker volume to 100%, and run the Rightmark default test suite at 192 kHz, 24-bit. The OS is tuned to 192 kHz/24-bit input and output, and the Line-In volume is adjusted until we have the best RMAA value in the mini-pretest. We look specifically at the Dynamic Range of the audio codec used on board, as well as the Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise.
As you can see, the Creative solution found on the Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 provided by far the best result in the Dynamic Range test. The Realtek ALC1150 motherboards were fairly similar, though the MSI, Asrock and Asus boards did perform better than the Supermicro and EVGA boards. Asrock's ALC1220 provided decent results though given the supporting audio features list we were hoping for a bit more.



When looking at the total harmonic distortion + noise we again find that the Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 is far superior to the other boards tested. That said the new Asrock Z270 boards did perform well here, matching the older Z170 Extreme7+.



Deferred procedure call latency or DPC is a function within Windows that allows higher priority tasks such as device drivers to defer lower priority tasks for execution at later times. It's an interrupt and reassignment of sorts performed by the operating system.
Users will find that DPC latency varies from brand to brand and even board to board, so while Asrock's Z170 Extreme7+ for example might have offered low latency, there's no guarantee this will be the case with the Z270 Extreme4.
DPC issues show up in the form of audio dropouts and streaming video issues, so those using their system for encoding purposes for example will find it crucial to have a motherboard capable of maintaining a low interrupt to process latency.
The good news is tools such as LatencyMon are freely available and easy to use for checking a systems latency. We ran LatencyMon for 20 minutes at which point the maximum result was recorded.
As you can see the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 and Z270 Extreme4 performed impressively here, both offering low latency.

Great Value, Tons of Features
Both new Asrock motherboards impressed us for a few good reasons. Out of the box, I thought there was no way they would be sub-$200 motherboards, but as it turns out they can both be had for well under that price with the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 set at $170 and the Z270 Extreme4 at only $150.
We were particularly impressed with their audio solutions, dual Ultra M.2 slots, USB 3.1 Type-C and Type-B, Intel LAN, Nichicon 12K black capacitors and reinforced PCIe slots which also improves EMI shielding. Given how similar the boards are overall, the Z270 Extreme4 is clearly the better bargain, but we wouldn't talk you out of buying the Fatal1ty model either.
Each comes in a fairly complete package with all the M.2 screws you'll need including a third for the Wi-Fi adapter, should you purchase one separately. Both motherboards also ship with a high-bandwidth SLI bridge, so that's a huge bonus for those going SLI as this can cost north of $30 to purchase separately.



Another big plus is Asrock's UEFI BIOS design, which in my opinion is one of the best out there. The BIOS is easy to navigate, looks great, and makes overclocking dead simple. Manually bumping our Core i7-7700K up to 4.9GHz was a two-step process and Asrock's overclocking presets also worked well.

There's still a little room for improvement but nothing major. I'd much rather drop the dated VGA output in favor of a DisplayPort connector. Of course, these boards will likely only be used with a discrete graphics card, but DisplayPort makes more sense than VGA nonetheless.



Overall, given the relatively low cost, Asrock has crammed these boards full of quality features. As mentioned earlier, the Z270 Extreme4 impressed us the most given its better value and I wouldn't expect there will be many other Z270 boards that are so well rounded at the $150 price point.