ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

[bpatters69]

Hello All,

First time poster. I have an ASRock Extreme6 on order from NewEgg. It should be here late this week. I also ordered 2 x 4GB RAM which was listed on the Motherboard compatibility list. Anyway, I wanted to ask some questions prior the boards arrival. I have an i7 4790K CPU and according to the ASRock website, I will have to upgrade the BIOS to P1.30. So an apologies for what is probably a silly question but does that mean I go this page and download the 1.30 BIOS version for Windows? I plan to run Windows 7. Any tips on installing the BIOS?

Speaking of BIOS, what setting should I modify if any? I plan on installing an SSD drive for my OS and Microsoft Office with two x 1TB Mechanical Hard drives. I will also have a SATA DVD.

Thanks, Bill

[Britgeezer]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Hopefully if NE ship you a current MB it will come with the latest BIOS. Otherwise you may have an issue updating the BIOS with the CPU you ordered, it looks like it needs at least 1.30 to recognize your intended CPU. What version does the NE website offer in their details for your MB?

If you are new to BIOS changes, download the MB manual and take time to understand the features before it arrives, for your configuration, its that not complicated until you go deep into features.

[kephafan]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Hello bpatters69,
I'm on my first build with the Extreme6 that I had purchased around July '14 with an i7-4790K. I'm a newbie on this stuff and I had no problems at ALL getting the pc running.
Do go to the page you listed to d/l the bios. That's where I got mine!

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Hello All,

First time poster. I have an ASRock Extreme6 on order from NewEgg. It should be here late this week. I also ordered 2 x 4GB RAM which was listed on the Motherboard compatibility list. Anyway, I wanted to ask some questions prior the boards arrival. I have an i7 4790K CPU and according to the ASRock website, I will have to upgrade the BIOS to P1.30. So an apologies for what is probably a silly question but does that mean I go this page and download the 1.30 BIOS version for Windows? I plan to run Windows 7. Any tips on installing the BIOS?

Speaking of BIOS, what setting should I modify if any? I plan on installing an SSD drive for my OS and Microsoft Office with two x 1TB Mechanical Hard drives. I will also have a SATA DVD.

Thanks, Bill

Britgeezer, There is no chance that Newegg will know what BIOS version the boards they ship have, they never provide that type of information on their web pages.

bpatters69, The BIOS version your board has can be found by finding the white sticker (two actually) that are put on the BIOS chips at the factory. The BIOS chips are located in the lower right hand corner of the board, just above the board's Reset and Power buttons.

IMO, your board will have at least BIOS version 1.30, and probably a newer version than that. This board is very popular and no doubt has been restocked several times by Newegg, and have the latest production units. The 1.30 BIOS is six months old, and I doubt ASRock has not made any more stock since that time.

But in reality, the BIOS version should not be an issue for you at all. All Z97 boards should support Devils Canyon processors like yours with any BIOS version. That was one of the main reasons the Z97 chipset exists, to support DC processors. The 1.30 BIOS version just adds the "Easy OC" table entries for your processor, but it will function fine without the Easy OC entries, which are just an ASRock feature.

FYI, most mother boards need a functioning CPU in order to update the BIOS, your board is one of that kind. If your CPU did not work in the board, you could not update the BIOS.

The default BIOS settings are fine for installing a SSD and HDDs. If you plan on using RAID arrays in the future, you must set the SATA mode to RAID before you install Windows, it is not easy to change to RAID mode after installing your OS.

More important is locating and using the Intel SATA ports on your board. The board also has four SATA ports provided by two ASMedia SATA chips that do not perform as well as the Intel SATA ports do, and would also require a driver to be installed during the OS installation. Check the manual for the Intel SATA port locations, but I can tell you that the six lower SATA ports are the Intel SATA ports.

When installing Windows, only have the target OS drive (SSD I imagine) connected to the PC. You can have the DVD drive connected too of course, but you don't want either of your HDDs connected (or at least with their power cable connected) or Windows will put the boot partition on one of the HDDs instead of the main OS drive (SSD.) If you have the HDDs connected, if you later remove the one that gets the boot partition put on it, the PC will no longer boot. That can be fixed with the installation disk, but why not do things right in the first place. That is a bad practice that Windows does for some reason, but is easily avoided.

[bpatters69]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Britgeezer, There is no chance that Newegg will know what BIOS version the boards they ship have, they never provide that type of information on their web pages.

bpatters69, The BIOS version your board has can be found by finding the white sticker (two actually) that are put on the BIOS chips at the factory. The BIOS chips are located in the lower right hand corner of the board, just above the board's Reset and Power buttons.

IMO, your board will have at least BIOS version 1.30, and probably a newer version than that. This board is very popular and no doubt has been restocked several times by Newegg, and have the latest production units. The 1.30 BIOS is six months old, and I doubt ASRock has not made any more stock since that time.

But in reality, the BIOS version should not be an issue for you at all. All Z97 boards should support Devils Canyon processors like yours with any BIOS version. That was one of the main reasons the Z97 chipset exists, to support DC processors. The 1.30 BIOS version just adds the "Easy OC" table entries for your processor, but it will function fine without the Easy OC entries, which are just an ASRock feature.

FYI, most mother boards need a functioning CPU in order to update the BIOS, your board is one of that kind. If your CPU did not work in the board, you could not update the BIOS.

The default BIOS settings are fine for installing a SSD and HDDs. If you plan on using RAID arrays in the future, you must set the SATA mode to RAID before you install Windows, it is not easy to change to RAID mode after installing your OS.

More important is locating and using the Intel SATA ports on your board. The board also has four SATA ports provided by two ASMedia SATA chips that do not perform as well as the Intel SATA ports do, and would also require a driver to be installed during the OS installation. Check the manual for the Intel SATA port locations, but I can tell you that the six lower SATA ports are the Intel SATA ports.

When installing Windows, only have the target OS drive (SSD I imagine) connected to the PC. You can have the DVD drive connected too of course, but you don't want either of your HDDs connected (or at least with their power cable connected) or Windows will put the boot partition on one of the HDDs instead of the main OS drive (SSD.) If you have the HDDs connected, if you later remove the one that gets the boot partition put on it, the PC will no longer boot. That can be fixed with the installation disk, but why not do things right in the first place. That is a bad practice that Windows does for some reason, but is easily avoided.

Thanks to all for the replies. I really appreciate it.

Parsec,

I am with you on the hard drives. I am a KISS kind of guy. I was planning on only having the SSD installed and powered when I install Windows. I also have a dedicated graphics card and I will not install that until after windows is installed. The Mobo has a DVI port so I will just use that for the install. Once the OS is installed, I will add the graphics card and hard drives.

Since you mentioned the SATA connections, here is my understanding of how to connect the drives. Below is a picture. Basd on the manual several of the SATA drives share resources with other SATA connectors so I will only connect my devices to SATA connectors that do not share any resources. You will see in the picture a description which tells you which SATA connectors are shared.


Am I right? I have an SSD drive (boot), a SATA DVD and two mechanical hard drives.

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Yes, that looks perfect!

BTW, I have this board and use all the Intel SATA ports. As long as you don't use an M.2 drive in the M2_2 port, or a SATA Express drive (which don't exist currently), you won't have any problem using the SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 ports.

[bpatters69]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Yes, that looks perfect!

BTW, I have this board and use all the Intel SATA ports. As long as you don't use an M.2 drive in the M2_2 port, or a SATA Express drive (which don't exist currently), you won't have any problem using the SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 ports.

Many thanks

[schwachs]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Oh, I didn't read that part about the boot SATA port... I am going to move mine tonight. Will BIOS automatically just use the new port especially if it's the only drive in the rig at the moment?

[bpatters69]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

Oh, I didn't read that part about the boot SATA port... I am going to move mine tonight. Will BIOS automatically just use the new port especially if it's the only drive in the rig at the moment?

I do not see why not Schwachs. Per the manual SATA3_0 is where the motherboard looks first for the boot device. If the boot drive is not connected to SATA3_0, the motherboard will look for a drive in the other SATA ports. Maybe you will notice faster booting and maybe not. I would think that it takes milliseconds for the motherboard to check each SATA port.

[schwachs]

Re: ASRock Extreme 6 Motherboard - i7 4790K CPU and questions about BIOS

yeah, i can imagine it's actually perceptible. i mean i have an ssd in there as is...