Asrock Z77 Extreme4 $105 FS@ Newegg

[mjd24]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-13157293-L0A

Good until midnight Wednesday

 

[manko]

How does this compare to the GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H they have on sale for $100 AR?

 

[mjd24]

As far as I know the Gigabyte has better VRMs and the ASrock has faster boot speeds. Maybe someone else could chime in to answer in better detail.

 

[kleinkinstein]

AsRock bios is better, but the drivers sux. The Realtek LAN is a joke. If you game or make a living online, get the D3H.

Head-2-Head, here

 

[Fastx]

AsRock bios is better, but the drivers sux. The Realtek LAN is a joke. If you game or make a living online, get the D3H.

Head-2-Head, here

Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 has the Broadcom Lan. The on board sound ALC 898 chip with the THX sounds better than I was expecting.

 

[GullyFoyle]

Anandtech Lan Benchies Looks about even.

 

[Rvenger]

Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 is better than the Gigabyte Z77X-D3H. The D3H only has a 4 pin CPU power and power delivery would be better on the asrock since there are more phases and 8 pin power. If you were going Gigabyte get the Z77X-UD3H at least.

 

[TJCS]

Been using this board for 4 months. It is very stable and all features has been working great(including the JMicron eSATA port).

 

[manko]

Thanks for all the input on how it compares to the Gigabyte boards.

Amazon is now matching the Extreme4 price. I don't know how long it will last.

I may hold out to see if there are any better combo deals later this week (better than Microcenter's usual specials).

 

[bankster55]

I dont care what kinda chips it has - hella price
IIRC last one I bought for a build was $210?

 

[The0ne]

I have one device that remains unknown. If I installed all drivers from Asrock website Windows crashes and repeats the boot-up. For now, I just let Windows 8 install its own drivers for the MB. Not sure what kind of hit in performance I'm taking over this but it has been disappointing.

 

[mjd24]

I dont care what kinda chips it has - hella price
IIRC last one I bought for a build was $210?

Agreed. I jumped on this board 6 weeks ago on a sale price of $123. If I were in need of a mb I would jump on this... unless maybe I lived near a Microcenter.

 

[bankster55]

I have one device that remains unknown. If I installed all drivers from Asrock website Windows crashes and repeats the boot-up. For now, I just let Windows 8 install its own drivers for the MB. Not sure what kind of hit in performance I'm taking over this but it has been disappointing.

Well, sounds like you have a driver issue, which actually belongs in AT mobo forum. There is a thread there for Ex4 with 46000 views as a matter of fact

 

[jjjayb]

I've had this board for a few months. Rock solid. The only complaint I have is one I discoverd a few nights ago. There is an external button to reset the Bios. Sounds great in theory, except it's right near all the USB connections on the back of the computer. I went to plug in my wheel the other day and accidentally hit this button which threw me right into the Bios. It defaulted to the original bios settings which caused windows to BSOD on boot, even before I could get into safe mode. Took me a few hours of fiddling with it to realize what happened. I don't know how I didn't notice the button back there to reset the CMOS when I installed it.

Other than that, it's a great board.

 

[qliveur]

From everything I've read about it, this is the best bang-for-the-buck Z77 board out there.

 

[craftech]

Is it just me or do others hate the "combo" ps2 ports on most of the motherboards these days. Personally I prefer a PS2 mouse and a PS2 keyboard. The splitters and other devices do not work well. I have tried four different ones.

Also no firewire ports or headers on these if you need that.

John

 

[jjjayb]

Just curious. What is the benefit of PS2 mouse and keyboard over USB?

 

[GullyFoyle]

PS/2 or USB? (Keyboard)

PS/2 or USB?
PS/2 wins on three fronts: First, it supports full n-key rollover. Second, PS/2 keyboards aren't polled, but are completely interrupt based. And third, it is impossible for it to be delayed by the USB bus being used by other devices. There are two types of USB transfer modes - the interrupt transfer mode (USB polls keyboard, when key is sensed the USB controller sends the interrupt to the CPU), and the isochronous transfer mode, which reserves a certain amount of bandwidth for the keyboard with a guaranteed latency on the bus. Unfortunately, there are absolutely no keyboards made that use the latter, because special controllers would have to be used, thus making it cost prohibitive.

So if your keyboard supports both PS/2 and USB, and your PC has a PS/2 port, there's no reason not to use it.

 

[Vicaar]

Slight tangent - it appears the Extreme3 model is now $99 with free g.skill ram (2x4GB).

 

[Rvenger]

Slight tangent - it appears the Extreme3 model is now $99 with free g.skill ram (2x4GB).

Looks like it has 1 less power phase and just the ALC892 audio. Not bad.