If you’re unsure of which motherboard can give you a bigger bang for the buck, know this: Tom’s Hardware, the authority on tech which is renowned globally for reviewing and comparing these products, is always there to provide insight for undecided minds. Their chief editor, Thomas Soderstrom reviewed three Z97 express motherboards ranging from $220 to $280 this month, and gave ASRock’s Z97 Extreme9 the Tom’s Hardware’s 2014 Approved award for being one of the best Z97 chipset boards that offers the most value!
Thomas Soderstrom from Tom’s Hardware stated, “ASRock Z97 Extreme9 uses dual GbE chips from Intel, PCIe 3.0 bridge chips to support 4-Way SLI/CrossFireX, and also adds a couple more SATA ports and some extra slots. And its Ultra M.2 interface does add cost to the board, thus it gets our stamp of approval.”
ASRock Z97 Extreme9 is a full-fledged ATX motherboard covered with high-end extras for hardware enthusiasts. First of all, there’s an added PLX PEX 8747 bridge chip that offers solid PCIe 3.0 lanes for 4-Way SLI/CrossFireX setups. Secondly the storage options are plentiful, including ten SATA3 ports, two next generation SATA Express connectors, one ordinary 10Gb/s M.2 socket plus another gen3 x4 Ultra M.2 socket which goes by the speed of 32Gb/s! Furthermore, it sports two Intel LAN chips and Teaming for combining two connections into one with a bigger bandwidth, a 5-pin Thunderbolt AIC header for supporting Thunderbolt 2 devices, and so many features that I’m reluctant to go on, or else this paragraph is going to end up in a gravitational singularity.
