Gadgetory

so it's time to get my double extreme on with the x99 asrock extreme 6 with USB 3.1 ladies and gentlemen welcome back to tech yes City this is brian coming back to you guys today with yet another asrock x99 motherboard review however this time it has USB 3.1 so last year you guys probably know that I reviewed the asrock extreme 6 and it was pretty much the answer to all my problems on the x99 line I was having a lot of problems with the previous boards that I used the MSA SLI Plus also as well as the gigabyte u d4 and when asrock probably saw this they said hey we're confident in our product we'll send you over something that works and when I got it in it worked flawlessly and since then I think they've noticed that I really do expose all the details about a motherboard and if there's something that I don't like I will let you guys know and so today with the x99 asrock extreme 6 with USB 3.1 i'm glad to say that it's yet another solid board from asrock on the x99 line so we'll quickly go over today a quick flash review of the motherboard because I've already done a really in-depth review on the extreme 6 and this motherboard doesn't differ that much so if you wish to see that review I'll put the link in the description below with a little photo there or in up here and you guys can check that out if you want to know every little minor detail but I'll go over the things I like and some little things that I don't like and then we'll move over to a quick look at the BIOS we'll do a quick sound test for you guys and then we'll move on to a conclusion as well as testing out some USB 3.1 so starting from top to bottom you get a big chunky heatsink covering a 12 phase vrm which has really good components on a 12 key niche con caps 60 amp chokes dual mosfet design there but not only that the vrm stays cool and this is with overclocks that go up to 1.3 volt I still had no problems with this vrm and the heatsink was cool to touch in a 25-degree controlled environment so really good job with this variant I don't see you coming into any problems with everyday 24/7 overclocks on this motherboard so looking at memory compatibility that we've got eight dims which supports up to a hundred and twenty eight gigabytes of ddr4 memory you can also tune this in the BIOS very in-depth as well so you can change individual voltages on the RAM and stuff like that so that's a good thing you've also got two USB three front outs there on the motherboard if you wish to connect that looking further down you've got ten solder three ports there as well as the solder Express so this is added in from the extreme six standard edition you've got these solder Express port there as well which will actually cancel out aside of three port if you wish to use that now also the first six ports are dedicated to being raid Abul if that's a word and then the last four ports there start a three but they can't be put in raid configurations now further down the board you've got a power button and a reset button if you wish to push it put put this on a bench as well as you've got the dr. debug LED light there which can help you if you're having problems especially if you're overclocking and coming into problems or if your parts of faulty it'll read out codes and possibly the motherboards faulty from the factory it'll let you know that so you got all your standard connectivity ports there USB two front outs funderbolt front audio out there you've also got a comm port there as well as one thing I'll mention is the dual BIOS designer it's very good because you can select between the two different bosses a or B and so if you're upgrading your BIOS you can turn it to the other BIOS and then upgrade that and test if everything's working okay and if it is you can keep it on that bus upgrade the previous boss the vice versa it can save a lot of headaches in the in the future because in the past they have had a BIOS brick and it has ruined the whole motherboard so it's great that there's a dual blast design though I do expect that on an ex ninety nine board so looking in the middle of the board there straight above the three PCIe 316 speed slots there we've also got an auxilary power in there which will supply more power to the PCIe slots if you especially be going with 3-way SLI or something like that you've also got a fan port there and in total you've got six fan headers on the board which is great and you can control them in the bus with the Fant stick tuna just below that you've got an MDOT to solder port there if you wish to use that it is very fast I do recommend it if you're going within ussd nowadays you've also got to one speed PCIe slots there and also a PCI mini slot there now one limitation about this board is that if you go to 5820k it won't support 3-way SLI will support two-way but it won't support 3-way if you want to go through a sli you've got to step it up to a 59 30 K now I'm not too sure about why this is happening but I believe this is a thing implemented from Intel with recent BIOS updates so just be careful of that and be mindful that if you are getting this board now another thing as well you've got the besides that the purity sound - now I'll do a quick test and I'll talk about the audio because I do think it's a big part of a motherboard especially in x99 motherboard you should be getting a good onboard audio solution and now the purity sound to it is pretty much the best onboard audio solution I've tried not just with the audio out but also the mic in and as well as the line in they're both very really good so if you're wanting to record things and use a preamp like I do this is a great onboard audio solution let's quickly go over to the back of the board now so looking from top to bottom at the back of the connectivities there you also get an i/o shield included which is black which is good but looking at this you get a ps2 port so you can plug in a ps2 mouse or keyboard I personally use a ps2 keyboard myself and you can boot that from the computer so you just press a key on your keyboard and you're good to go your computer's boot it up you noted for a power button anymore you also got two USB to ports there looking further down you've got the USB 3.1 C connector which is the reversible design it's actually a little bit smaller than a USB 2 port as well and that's giving you give you future upgrade ability as well as that tang gigabits per second speeds which is actually faster than solder three so that's a good thing you also got below that a solder Express or a solder eSATA port sorry and you've got two USB three is connected to a Qualcomm Ethernet adapter below that and then below that you've got the Intel I to 1/8 V Ethernet connector as well as 2 USB 3 ports there now below that you get the audio options which supports 7.1 DDS sound I believe also it supports analog 5.1 our and you've got your line in and Mike in there which can run separate which is what I actually utilizing the audio out there also it is important to note that the audio out on the rear sounds exactly the same as it does on the front so I'd be using the audio out on the rear as I think that's where the headphone amp goes to anyway so some other words in the past they only go to the front audio out which is a bummer because I like using my rear audio out as I don't have a front audio out on my board as well so anyway that being said let's move on now to a quick look at the BIOS and then we will move on to the actual audio test and then I'll quickly do a USB 3.1 test for you guys as well so we'll take a quick look at the asrock UEFI bars for the extreme 6 3.1 and now it's very intricate just like the other asrock x99 boards i've reviewed this one has a blue and black theme it's got all these different options that any enthusiast would appreciate you can even disable cause disabled hyper-threading if you want to you can change all your RAM timings even advanced Ram timers you can also change the actual individual stick voltage dim voltages themselves so if you want this particular Ram to have more voltage you can change that as opposed to another stick of RAM so very good for overclocking there's also the fantastic profiles there for tuning your fans manually from the actual onboard connectors there so anyway that's about it let's move on now to a sound test so let's take a look at as rocks onboard x99 purity sound - now this time I'm recording it from the line-in over my condenser mic which is running through a preamp I was originally gonna record it on this razor carcase headset but when I did I found it had a lot of popping and it would not give you a good idea of how good the motherboard itself is so I decided to just test it on the condenser mic and just show you how good it is and if you want to hear what the mic and sounds like over my V motor Pro which is currently not in my studio at the moment then just click on the fatality review and you can hear what it sounds like there therefore that's worth mic in and line in are really good they virtually introduced no noise especially the mic in when you got at a volume level of 50 plus 20 dB it's you know with noise suppression off which I like noise suppression I try to have it off if I can and it's a really good job on those two ports the audio out as well great volume levels there great clarity it's you know the bass roll-off is not as it's like some of the best for an onboard audio solution and so overall they've got they've done it really well there is one negative about the onboard audio and this is pretty much with every on board on its solution of her to date is that there is a bit of crosstalk it's not going to be as good as something like an and as easier 7k but I don't expect it to be that's like $100 decamp solution dedicated DAC and solution I don't expect them to put that on a $250 motherboard so anyway that being said it is better than for instance the purity sound to is better than gigabytes UD 4x 99 and pop Forex for example so a really good job with their own blurry solution I like what they've done but let's move on now to the USB 3.1 testing didn't now now that I did with this I couldn't actually max the speeds on this I don't have the gear here to actually properly max USB 3.1 so if you need USB 3.1 then you can definitely utilize it with this motherboard though what I did test was I did some real-world tests I copied a file from a USB SSD to my mainboard side of three SSD and it was like instantaneous I was shocked a 1.3 gig file was pretty much just snap it over it was instantaneous when I did do some benchmarks I did edged out some slightly higher speeds on the USB 3.1 line over the solder three lines so that was pretty good to see I liked how I could actually benchmark that and get a little bit of extra speeds there there for what it's worth if you need USB 3.1 it is on this board you've got two USB 3.1 a slots over that card and you've also got a USB 3.1 C there over the actual onboard port itself so great connectivity there and for me personally though I just I can still utilize USB 3 perfectly fine so it's if it's something you need then if that's the deal-breaker then go for it but anyway that being said let's move on now to a conclusion with this motherboard so in conclusion I can only say really good things about as rocks x99 line boards and now one thing I do want to correct out the ways is that rocky knows this rumor on that as rock is a second-tier manufacturer of motherboards and with this x99 line that's come through I'm gonna say that's definitely not the case I'd say as Rock is a top tier motherboard manufacturer and in my case they're better than the other manufacturers boards that I had come through here they work perfectly and not only that run cool really stable fantastic onboard audio solution really good and I see on board I mean there's not much more that I would want from a motherboard except some little cosmetic things and I pointed that out those white clips I'd like to see them just color coded to the motherboard that's the only negative that I can really point out from my own personal experience with this motherboard other than that everything is rock-solid on this motherboard and in the past I mean as rock have put out those cheaper motherboards but nowadays they're a different company to azuz they putting out top-quality motherboards especially on this x99 line and I'm looking forward to what they do with the Z 107 line and hopefully they can send me something in there and I'll get some skylake testing for you done but when it comes to components features and utility asrock get it right that's their top priority with these motherboards and that's what really makes me happy as a tech reviewer is when the company gets the product right because hey I'm looking at my screen like 99.9% of the time I'm hardly ever looking at my rig so I don't care about cosmetics at the cost of utility and features and so this board gets it right where it just gets features and utility smack-bang top priority and that's what I would pay money for personally and that's what I recommend people paying money for when we compare that to the unifor for example there's fancy LEDs on board terrible on board audio solution in my opinion Mike ins has noise coming in the line in has noise coming in then you've got crashing on going on when you're trying to overclock your computer even on stable overclocks so it's good that they've got it right here and that's what I really like big thumbs up to asrock now the USB 3.1 that's the main feature that's added on here so the pricing I think it's about $300 around but a bit below that though you are getting USB 3.1 with the adding hard there two USB 3.1 a slots you're also getting that USB 3.1 C put directly on the board so you've got your options F for USB 3.1 and man USB 3.1 is fast it's faster than your solder three ports that you're connecting your hard drives to so it really is fast when I stopped and scratched my head I was like hey this is actually really fast so a good job in implementing that you've also got the adding card there so if you don't use USB 3.1 you probably just grab the card and sell it on eBay whatnot but if you don't need USB 3.1 there's also this standard extreme six out there there's also the extreme four which would be my would probably be my best value for money choice because a lot of people wouldn't use the dual ni C and a lot of people imagine wouldn't even use eight dims of memory so you might even want to step it down to an extreme three but anyway they've got all their pricing up there they've actually got really good pricing in Australia as well for the Aussies so that's something that I like that asrock are doing is they're giving good international pricing on their motherboards sorry that's that guys I can't say enough good about this motherboard or the asrock x99 line if I was going along the x99 line from a fresh build I'd be getting an asrock motherboard simple as that anyway guys I hope you enjoyed this review please give it a thumbs up if you have any questions or comments and you probably like what about as loose boards and EVGA boards I haven't tried them and you know they loose and EVGA they're welcome to send me a review sample even if it's just for review and I'll post it back to them so there's my offer to you guys in the meantime I am gonna chill out and give you guys when work on another tech video for you guys so if you want you can check me out on social media if you want to support the channel and keep its sponsor free then you can check out my patron as well as giving this video a big thumbs up and if you haven't subscribed already then hit that subscription button and I will check you out in another tech review very soon your tech news and peace out for now bye