Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

[USMCCpl]

I am in the market to build a new computer! I am looking at an ASRock z87 Extreme 9! Does anyone here own one? What do you like about it? and what do you not like about it? How is ASRock customer Support? How is ASRock warranty? I have been using EVGA, and ASUS but it is now time for a change! So please someone fill me in on ASRock I have the board, the cpu and ram in the newegg cart just waiting for some insight!

Thank you all for your time.

[Bluismycat]

Re: Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

USMCCpl

How you doin?

I waited for the Extreme 9 when I upgraded to haswell. It is absolutely brilliant! I had an ASUS z77 V Pro with an Ivy Bridge 3770K (first ASUS board I have owned) and it was a total let down. When I got it there was a solder slag in the atx power socket so it had to go back. It was fixed not replaced. When I got it back it was always very slow on restart from hibernation. Two of the SATA ports have now packed it in. All over it was a disappointment.

So as I said, I went back to ASRock. This board is fast! No problems what so ever! I am running 4770K Windows 7 Pro with 32 GB RAM. Just a word of advice...don't put your graphics card in the second PCIe port (as it says to do in the book) all your other PCIe ports will be disabled so put it in 1 or 3 or which ever other one you want. Just not 2. The new BIOS is good (my last ASRock was the z68 so I don't know if it is any different from z77). Restart from hibernation is typical ASRock...FAST!

I was going to try Gigabyte this time but the z87 Extreme 9/ac was the only board that had EVERYTHING I wanted/needed...10 SATA III's, dual ethernet, which is very good! Am running an LSI 8087 BR 10i miniSAS controller with RAID 10 and no! I am not imagining it, my speeds are faster! I don't know, better compatibility? Driver is the same but I DEFINITELY get a HEAP faster throughput. Haven't used the Thunderbolt yet...still a bit pricey for devices.

Bottom line...you can't go wrong with this board!

Customer service??? Don't know cos I haven't needed it.

Dave

[USMCCpl]

Re: Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

Dave,

Thank you for the info! That is awsome! I am currently running x58 and the bios and the memory has been a pain in the you no what. I did not know if i wanted to go with 16gb ram or 32gb ram. I dont know what i would need 32gb of ram for. Looking to put in a 770heartbeat for graphics. Same processor as yours. Then just need to find a good ssd.

Thanks again for your time!

[Bluismycat]

Re: Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

No probs. I an running 3 x 240GB SANDISK EXTREME SSD 550MB/510MB in RAID 0 which has been good but can be a pain when upgrading. Fortunately I needed to re-install windows when I upped to haswell....BSOD very often but each time I fixed it, the next time the mini-dump pointed somewhere else. Easiest way out was a new install...no corruption...still feel the mobo played a part too though I could be very wrong there.

Just a couple of days ago I looked at the new Samsung 840 EVO SSDs. They have 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB & 1TB. In Australia the 750GB is about $630 and when I compare it to my SANDISK's it is about the same cost but for only 1 drive so...no RAID. Also, the read/write is 540/520MB 98K/90K IOps...faster writes. I would be seriously looking at one of these, if I were you. 500GB is about $430, which isn't a bad price in Oz. But the big thing is the transfer speeds.

Not telling you what to do but I would be remiss, methinks, if I didn't mention it

BTW I thought the same thing about my RAM. I went for 32GB G Skill TRIDENT 2400MHz. Everyone says the difference in the RAM speed is negligible over 1600MHz but you DO see the difference. Also I am running a pretty big RAMDISK. I wanted no limitations or bottlenecks anywhere and...so far...no complaints. I am using AMD...Sapphire HD7970OC which is sufficient for me. I am a fan of eyefinity (3 x 27" 3D's) and I don't game, edit a fair bit. If you are upgrading from the x58 chipset then I know you will be very happy, my friend. However, the later gen cores don't overclock as well as the older gen cores. I think Sandy bridge was the last good OCing core. I had an i5 2500K which I ran at 4.8GHz stable for about 12 months. I can get that now with my Haswell i7 but there is a hell of a lot more fidgeting needed to get there. I don't really need it either but is fun to play...

[parsec]

Re: Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

I don't own a Z87 Extreme 9, but I do own a Z87 Extreme 6, which share many identical features.

There are many great things about this board, if you consider features working as they should anything beyond normal and expected. For example, the dual network chips work great and team together perfectly, although there is more than one type of teaming, but Adaptive Load Balancing works fine.

One imperfection IMO is the use of the ASMedia 1061 SATA chipset to provide four of the SATA III ports. The identical chipset is used on ASRock Z77 boards to provide two SATA III ports. The use of two SATA ports on the Z77 boards is not leaving the capabilities of this chipset unused, since there are no additional dedicated PCI-E connections to this chipset left unused in the Z77 boards. The Z87 boards simply have four SATA ports sharing the same bandwidth capability used by two ports.

The ASMedia 1061 uses one PCI-E 2.0 lane for its I/O connection to the mother board. The max speed of one PCI-E 2.0 lane is 5Gb/s, rather than the full 6Gb/s of the Intel SATA III ports using the DMI buss. That is not one PCI-E 2.0 lane per SATA port, that is one PCI-E 2.0 lane for the chipset itself, period. So do not expect the same performance from the ASMedia SATA III ports that you get from the Intel SATA III ports. You'll find that the difference is not small, unfortunately.

But the ASMedia and most Marvell SATA III chipsets are identical in design, using one PCI-E 2.0 lane, so no other mother board manufacture is better than another regarding the add-on SATA chipsets like these.

I also agree that Sandy Bridge CPUs are the easiest to OC, with a downward trend into Ivy Bridge and now Haswll, in that aspect. We can only imagine what IVB and Haswell CPUs would be like if they used solder between the CPU die and IHS, rather than TIM. Since IVB-E processors (socket 2011) will be using solder between the die and IHS, the choice of TIM by Intel for IVB and Haswell processors seems to be purely arbitrary, and may even be a way to limit their ultimate performance.

[USMCCpl]

Re: Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

Ok you guys have been alot of help so far. Some more questions then!
What is the 555, how do u set it up?
Ramdisk? How does that work and how do you set that up as well?
Is there anything else i can do for speed and stability?

[Bluismycat]

Re: Questions on ASRock z87 extreme 9

OK.

555 basically is X-Fast USB, X-Fast LAN, X-Fast RAM.
These are ASRock features (all mobo vendors have these features, they just name them differently).

X-Fast USB lets you speed up your USB sticks, drives, whatever you are using through USB. I get about 2.5 -3.0 x stable speeds on my USB3.0 sticks

X-Fast LAN I hated on the z68 but then again I didn't know how to use it properly. Has since been refined works very well. It helps you get the best bandwidth for your on line activities (remember that you can NEVER get more than what your ISP designates to you, though). You can prioritize your connections in many different ways. It makes your online experience better. It is, I think, better than the ASUS feature but then again there are probably people that like ASUS that will tell you differently. It works with both LAN and WLAN (Ethernet and Wireless)

X_Fast RAM Is the same kind of thing. It gives you the choice of running a RAM DISK as well. Basically with a RAM Disk, you can stipulate a certain amount of RAM to be put aside to be used as a virtual disk, the pc treats it like it is a disk drive. This is good because a RAM Disk is heaps faster than SSD's, HDD's etc. File access time is a lot faster. It can access data with only the memory address of a file. The max throughput is only limited by the speed of the RAM, data bus and CPU. Whereas physical drives are limited by the storage bus eg: IDE, SATA, USB etc. The last advantage is the file sys that is used too. All the extra accesses make an SSD or HDD slower.

The big downside with a RAM DISK is, however, it is volatile memory. So if you have a power loss then it is lost too. That means...backup backup backup. Because when you shut down, the files are lost. But you can see the advantages of a RAM DISK.

555 to me is just a gimmick. What I mean is the features are great but they only call it 555 so people will remember it. When you install you mobo, you should install A-Tuning too. This is a good ASRock suite that you can use...extra features, like "in-Windows OC" (my name for it), plus it gives you temps and speeds and fan controls etc. Like I said...the features are pretty standard throughout the industry. This is just ASRock's way of presenting them. And present them they do. They look good, work well and give you good control of whatever you want to achieve. But as I said there are drawbacks and they are more than I have told you. To my mind, though, I think the positives outway the negatives.

Nearly forgot, All this is on the install disc or you can go to the ASRock site, click on the mobo and then click on downloads and drivers (I think, from memory). There is the whole list of ALL the drivers you want for the board in question. BIOS firmware, LAN drivers, audio, Intel drivers...RST (Rapid StorageTechnology), USB drivers...you get the idea. Or as I said, just stick the disc in and click setup or start up (something like that, will be obvious) and you will get a window open up that gives you the choice of downloading the full suite. This is about the easiest way to go. Then, when all those drivers are installed the pc is free to update those drivers to the latest and you are all good.

Hope this helps