Final words and conclusion
Final words and conclusion
It is nice to see what the motherboards manufacturers put out in terms of motherboards after a rather disappointing Haswell processor release. The Z87 platform however is mature and very interesting when it comes to board partner motherboards.
What ASRock offers for as little as 120 USD / 125 EUR is a little flabbergasting. The motherboard has everything you need from 6 Gbps SATA ports, multi-GPU configurations are possible, USB 3.0 ports and of course an improved and enhanced audio solution that is based on the Realtek ALC 1150 codec. But lets not forget the included KillerNIC E2205. The PCI card based on that Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2200 chip did cost over 100 bucks a pop a year ago. You now get it integrated at hardly any cost, and we feel that is downright lovely. And yes I also realize that not everybody is a fan of that solution and prefer the regulat Intel NIC.
Hats off to ASRock in terms of tweaking and overclocking. It is very easy on this motherboard thanks to a very mature and user friendly uEFI BIOS. It's relatively easy to navigate through with and without a mouse. So pop a nice liquid cooling kit on the processor and you will get to the 4600 MHz range with a 4770K easily. A stable higher frequency will be a bit harder to set though but that has nothing to do with the motherboard. Haswell processors, just like Ivy Bridge, are mind numbing irritating to cool once you increase CPU voltage. For this review we used a dual-fan-dual-radiator D14 from Noctua, we do this on purpose. We do get the question every now and then as to why we do not liquid cool the processor. That's simple, we choose a high-end heatpipe cooler to emulate and replicate the most common OC situations you guys apply at home. See, most of you guys use heatpipe coolers. Albeit the AIO Liquid Cooling kits definitely are getting more popular. But these as well often cool at the very same performance level the Noctua D14 offers. Proper liquid cooling we feel is the only way to go once you pass 4600 MHz with a wee bit of extra voltage on the processor (1.35V and higher). The overall baseline performance is really good though, definitely a notch faster than Intel's reference board, and that's thanks to the fact that ASRock has slightly higher turbos at CPU multipliers of 39. Hey it's extra performance at no cost, we dig that.
Aesthetics
Taste differ per person, but the Z87 Fatal1ty Killer looks okay. For me personally there's a little too much coloring going on, I like two tones. Here the motherboard is dark, the connectors red. But then white levers on the PCI slit connectors and memory and the golden colored CAPs make the motherboard a little busy to look at. These are near nitpicking minor details though.
Tweaking
We mentioned it in the first chapter of this conclusion already, overall non-overclocked performance as stated is above the baseline of the reference Z87 motherboards we tested, with an offset here and there of course. If you have two left hands in terms of overclocking then just use the BIOS overclock settings and after a few seconds your motherboard will all of the sudden be overclocked, a performance boost at very little extra power consumption as the CPU will now be throttled to a configurable clock frequency. The tweaking performance of this motherboard was on par with what we expected. We got the 4770K processor rocking stable at 4800 MHz with the memory (XMP enabled) at 2400 very easily, and that's not bad at all in this price range!
As stated in the introduction, Haswell processors run hotter when overclocked opposed to Sandy Bridge, reaching 4600~4900 MHz might be easy to accomplish with the motherboard but you'll find yourself needing juice in the 1.325~1.400 Volts range of the processor and that requires massive cooling. So be prepared for processor heat, proper liquid cooling definitely deserves a recommendation here alright. Or perhaps some delid action eh?
Final words
I think it is safe to say that ASRock can play in the big league of the motherboard arena. Today's review is a perfect example of a 125 EUR motherboard that offers high-end features and great tweakability. Combined six SATA 6 Gbps ports, the KillerNIC Ethernet interface and the 7.1 channel HD audio as delivered by the high-end Realtek ALC1150 codec and we already are happy. Then in conjunction with a TI amplifier you get support for quality headphones that have an impedance of up to 600 Ohms. The Realtek ALC1150 codec is covered by an EMI shield (Killer NIC as well), and the part of the PCB where the audio hardware is located is isolated to prevent interference. The motherboard is multi-GPU up-to 3-way SLI/Crossfire. Z87 motherboards offers you everything and anything you need from an enthusiast class Haswell processor platform, in terms of features, multi-GPU support, USB 3.0, SATA3, PCIe Gen 3.0, ease of tweaking and sure, the design and component selection is done well. We would have liked to seen one extra NIC or added WIFI though. Overall we feel this is a very nice motherboard that will appeal to the high-end PC gaming crowd that likes to overclock a bit as well. Typically a great product comes at a high price, but at 125 EUR / 120 USD please do realize that the ASRock Z87 Fatal1ty Killer is a perfect balance of price versus features, a great NIC, great audio, decent looks and excellent tweakability. And at this price we just have to give a great value award.
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