ASRock Z170 Extreme4 / Extreme4+ (Intel Z170) Motherboard Review (Page 3)

Circuit Analysis

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In my opinion motherboards look best when they don't have any heat sinks on them, but I know a lot of you like your heat sinks so I will take them off and do the circuit inspection so you don't have to!

If you count the phases this VRM is a 6+4+1+1 phase VRM. There are four major input rails to the CPU for Z170; VCC (VCore), VCCGT (Graphics core), VCCSA (System Agent), and VCCIO (CPU IO). Counting the phases from the top right to the bottom left. The first four are for the VCCGT, then the next 6 are for the VCore, and single phases for the VCCIO and VCCSA follow. ASRock is using a 4+2 phase PWM which has its phases doubled to 6+4 for the VCore and VCCGT, the VCCIO and VCCSA each have their own single phase PWMs. ASRock is using 12K gold capacitors.

The Intersil ISL95856 is a hybrid digital PWM which has a total of 4+3 phase outputs with three integrated drivers. The CPU VCC (VCore) uses 3 phases of the 4 phase output, two drivers are integrated and a single ISL6625A labeled (5AZ) is used for the 3rd driver. Each driver outputs to set sets of MOSFETs. The VCCGT (integrated graphics) uses 2 phases of the 3 from the PWM and another ISL6625A is used as the second driver. I wasn't able to identify the MOSFETs, but they are of good enough quality to allow for my maximum CPU overclocks.

The VCCSA and VCCIO are each powered by their own Richtek RT8120 single phase PWMs. The memory PWM is also a single phase Richtek RT8120 and the same FETs are used for the memory as are used for the CPU.

A single phase Ricktek PWM is used for the PCH power along with the same FETs as the memory VRM.

Last updated: Apr 7, 2020 at 12:33 pm CDT