ASRock Z77E-ITX Mini-ITX (Intel Z77) Motherboard Review

Introduction

Moving back onto the Intel Z77 motherboard pile again we're going to be looking at a board that took my fancy a while ago. The ASRock Z77E-ITX is as the name might suggest a Mini-ITX based motherboard which of course means it comes in at a very small size.

With companies like BitFenix releasing Mini-ITX cases like the Prodigy, we're seeing a shift in where people can now have these tiny little systems that still have room for large dual slot video cards. No longer does having a small PC mean that you have to be contempt with a slow PC.

Today we're going to find out just how this ASRock Mini-ITX board goes against some larger ATX based motherboards to see what we're losing when we move to such a small form factor, if we are losing anything at all.

The first thing we're going to do is take a look at the box, cover some of the main features that are present on the board and move inside to see what's going on with the bundle. Once we've done that we'll take a closer look at the board itself to see what this small board is able to offer us.

From there it's time to check out the BIOS to find out what our options look like and we'll of course check out the overclocking area before we move into the testbed and then the overclocking capabilities of the board. First, though, as we mentioned let's check out the package and see some of the main features that are offered from the ASRock Z77E-ITX.

Package

On the front we can see it's all about the 555 XFast technology that ASRock has been promoting for a while. Turning over we can see that the 555 XFast technology is expanded upon.

Along with that you can see we've got Lucid Virtu MVP technology, Intel Smart Connect and Rapid Start Technology along with Premium Gold Caps, something we've seen ASRock offer on more and more of their boards. You can also see some of the other main features include Digi Power, Internet Flash, mSATA and WiFi 802.11 b / g / n.

Moving inside the box you can see we've got the normal line up of paperwork along with some more information on 555 XFast and Lucid VIRTU MVP alongside the driver CD. In the cable department you can see we've got two SATA cables along with a DVI to VGA connector and the standard I/O panel.

Finally we finish up with a WiFi antenna that goes into the back of the motherboard. We'll cover that a little more later on, but you get a good idea looking above what exactly we're dealing with.