ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 (Intel Z68) Motherboard Review

Introduction

Even before I took over the Motherboard category here at TweakTown, I'd been using ASRock boards for a while since my VGA and RAM testbeds both used them. ASRock make some great boards, but there was always one little problem with them. Aesthetically they never looked great and considering what a shallow world we live in these days, the overall look of the boards were probably a little bit of a downer for some people.

Jump forward a bit and we got the release of the Fatal1ty line of boards; we saw a shift to those black PCBs with the accents of red. This was a really nice step in the right direction, but in the event you didn't want to be stared down by Fatal1ty in the BIOS, you were unfortunately out of luck when it came to other options.

Jump forward yet again and we have the launch of the new Gen3 series boards from ASRock. When I saw pictures of these boards I was really "Wowed" by the look of them. Before we have a closer look at the board itself, though, we need to check out the package.

Once we've done that we'll move onto the board to see the look up closer while we also cover the features that are on offer. From there we'll move into the BIOS before checking out our testbed today and the overclocking capabilities of the board. Then we're onto the testing side of things to see just what kind of performance we're able to get out of the new Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 motherboard from ASRock.

The Package

On the new Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 we can see ASRock has moved over to a really large package that opens up and gives us a look at the board. It seems that they've really chosen to lift the overall look of the board with this new Gen3 model as everything just looks better.

Moving inside the package, we've got the normal line-up of goodies included; Quick Install Guide, Software Setup Guide, Driver CD, I/O Backplate, six SATA cables, two Molex to SATA power connectors and a 3.5mm audio cable.

Along with those normal extras, we've also got two SLI bridges with one being a 3-way one along with a USB 3.0 front panel and a USB 2.0 / PS/2 header. The latter is a little bit of a weird one, but the board lacks any onboard PS/2 connector so the addition of the bonus pack panel is really nice. If you need PS/2 you can have it, if you don't then you don't need to use it.