**Official** Asrock Z68 Gen3 Extreme7 & Extreme4 thread

[davefran]

Hey mate.

Just wanted to say thanks for doing the bench and the screenshot... I see there is a thank statistic but I don't know how to do it... i'm new to this whole forum board thing...

anyway, thanks again.
acidwap

Cheers acidwap, you're very welcome, just glad I could be of some assistance

[sprach]

Hi everybody!
I've recently purchased the ASrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 coupled with a 2500k and I hereby report the following problems:
1. Having installed a Silver Arrow to cool the CPU, its fins touch my X-fi Titanium PCIX 1 card which is installed in the PCIX 1 slot right beneath the CPU socket. As a solution, I had to put some cloth between the back of the sound card and the cooler fins so that they don't get into contact directly.
2. My Razer Copperhead mouse is not working in UEFI 1.0; it is stuck in the middle of the screen and can only be moved up- and downwards, whereas the controls are inverted. This should be fixed with a UEFI update, I guess...
3. The second CPU fan connector misreads the RPM of the Silver Arrow's vent and the RPM often fail to show up in UEFI as well as in AIDA 64 and HWMonitor. This occurs randomly from boot to boot or power down cycle. It worked fine, then it stopped and so on.
4. My Lamptron FC5V2 fan controller, although fully powered up with a Molex connector, does not display anything on its screen (voltage & RPM), it is only backlit. It worked flawlessly on my previous board and has started to fail since changing the motherboard. This occurs randomly from boot to boot or power down cycle. It worked fine, then it stopped and so on.
5. ... and the most annoying problem is that the mobo has problems picking up my 2nd video (GTX 470) which I'm running in SLI mode.
Out of 5 boots into Windows, it fails to pick up the second card about 3-4 times. This is happening completely random. As a side-note, I have also plugged in the supplementary Molex power connector which is recommended by ASrock for SLI/CFX use.
I primarily bought this mobo because of its features and the layout, whereas it can accommodate my SLI with trislot coolers, however it refuses to recognize most of the time my second card.

Can anyone, please, provide some assistance on fixing my issues, especially points 3, 4 and 5? Thanks in advance for your support.

My specs are the following:
2500k @stock speed + Silver Arrow
Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
4x2GB Kingston HyperX 1600
2 x GTX470 in SLI, both cooled with Accelero Extreme GTX Plus
X-FI Titanium Fatality PCIX1
Vertex3 + WD 1.5TB Green + Asus DVDRW
Coolermaster Real Power 1000W
Lamptron FC5v2 fan controller + 6 x 120 vents
Saitek Eclipse II + Razer Copperhead

If anyone's interested, here are some links with BIOS updates. The forum is German.
http://www.pctreiber.net/forum/intel...2_15069.0.html
http://www.pctreiber.net/forum/intel...0_15078.0.html
P.S. Haven't tried them yet, but will give them a shot when I get home.

[SoMBrA]

Hello everyone, first of all thanks for the great thread

I was almost ready to buy ASRock Z68 Extreme 7 but then I'm seeing some problems here and there, and I'm thinking maybe change to Gigabyte, i don't mind pay more for that, but i know there will be things i will not use (as other said already before)

I was thinking going to Gigabyte Z68 UD7, since it will match very nice with my new build, and also love the layout and it's rock solid (hope!)

Do you recommend Z68 UD7 over the Z68 Extreme 7?
Any other recommendation? I know ASUS are having some trouble with the B3 so maybe i should avoid them...

If possible with Black PCB :>, really like the looks ASRock and Gigabyte

[LoneWolf]

Hello everyone, first of all thanks for the great thread

I was almost ready to buy ASRock Z68 Extreme 7 but then I'm seeing some problems here and there, and I'm thinking maybe change to Gigabyte, i don't mind pay more for that, but i know there will be things i will not use (as other said already before)

I was thinking going to Gigabyte Z68 UD7, since it will match very nice with my new build, and also love the layout and it's rock solid (hope!)

Do you recommend Z68 UD7 over the Z68 Extreme 7?
Any other recommendation? I know ASUS are having some trouble with the B3 so maybe i should avoid them...

If possible with Black PCB :>, really like the looks ASRock and Gigabyte

Without going into the Asrock bit (I think anything that needs to be discussed so far by myself and others already has been)

If you want to go Gigabyte, I'd ask yourself if you need the UD7, or if the UD5 or UD4 will do. Double-check the feature list. The big reason to have the UD7 is if you need the nVidia NF200 chip because you're loading your system down with cards, going TRI-SLI (or two dual-GPU cards). Other uses might be if you really need dual-NICs (most of us don't, though there are exceptions). If you don't need those things, the UD5, or maybe even the UD4, will be a great choice at a lesser price.

The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro doesn't appear to be a bad board. I don't know if it's built quite as heavily as the Gigabyte (FWIW, my Extreme 4 Gen3 wasn't, either, and aside from its quirks, it did what it did okay), and there have been some people who have complained of it being picky about RAM. However, it has the advantages of an Intel NIC, and a UEFI BIOS, and if you have to have UEFI, ASUS is probably the most advanced at this point. If you have to have black, the Maximus IV may be it for you; my only gripe was their poor placement of the USB3 header, done much better on the Asrock and Gigabyte boards, and that ASUS really doesn't have an incredible support reputation either (when their stuff works, it works great, when it doesn't, support is inconsistent).

I think at this point there really is no one perfect Z68 board. The Extreme 7 Gen3 comes closest in terms of layout, features, and design IMO, but having had the experience I did, I'd probably wait for another BIOS revision or two, and if reports come back good, I'd probably look on it as the winner.

[watercooled]

new bios out for the p67 extreme 4 gen 3

[RealTelstar]

new bios out for the p67 extreme 4 gen 3

It seems to give some problems, so if you dont have the Xai mouse, I would advice against flashing it.

[SoMBrA]

Without going into the Asrock bit (I think anything that needs to be discussed so far by myself and others already has been)

If you want to go Gigabyte, I'd ask yourself if you need the UD7, or if the UD5 or UD4 will do. Double-check the feature list. The big reason to have the UD7 is if you need the nVidia NF200 chip because you're loading your system down with cards, going TRI-SLI (or two dual-GPU cards). Other uses might be if you really need dual-NICs (most of us don't, though there are exceptions). If you don't need those things, the UD5, or maybe even the UD4, will be a great choice at a lesser price.

The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro doesn't appear to be a bad board. I don't know if it's built quite as heavily as the Gigabyte (FWIW, my Extreme 4 Gen3 wasn't, either, and aside from its quirks, it did what it did okay), and there have been some people who have complained of it being picky about RAM. However, it has the advantages of an Intel NIC, and a UEFI BIOS, and if you have to have UEFI, ASUS is probably the most advanced at this point. If you have to have black, the Maximus IV may be it for you; my only gripe was their poor placement of the USB3 header, done much better on the Asrock and Gigabyte boards, and that ASUS really doesn't have an incredible support reputation either (when their stuff works, it works great, when it doesn't, support is inconsistent).

I think at this point there really is no one perfect Z68 board. The Extreme 7 Gen3 comes closest in terms of layout, features, and design IMO, but having had the experience I did, I'd probably wait for another BIOS revision or two, and if reports come back good, I'd probably look on it as the winner.

Thanks for all the good info!
I think i will give ASRock a try, will go for the Extreme 7 Gen 3.
Will let you know if i experience any of the starnge behaviours you experienced with the "little brother" ;-)

[Undermoose]

I just upgraded my old Asus Rampage Extreme (x48) mobo with an ASRock Extreme7 Gen3, i7-2600k CPU, and 4 x 4gb Mushkin Redline DDR3-1600.

It's running great, memory performance is 2-4 times the old system, CPU a notch up over qx9770, but BLAM my CrossfireX performance is crippled! I went from a Windows 7 assessment of 7.4 to 6.0! I play games at 1920 x 1200 and they're feeling laggy.

I figure it's a learning curve, and needed tweak I'll eventually find.. anyone have some thoughts?

[Undermoose]

I just upgraded my old Asus Rampage Extreme (x48) mobo with an ASRock Extreme7 Gen3, i7-2600k CPU, and 4 x 4gb Mushkin Redline DDR3-1600.

It's running great, memory performance is 2-4 times the old system, CPU a notch up over qx9770, but BLAM my CrossfireX performance is crippled! I went from a Windows 7 assessment of 7.4 to 6.0! I play games at 1920 x 1200 and they're feeling laggy.

I figure it's a learning curve, and needed tweak I'll eventually find.. anyone have some thoughts?

Looks like I'm not getting CrossfireX performance because it's not working. It's enabled, but I tested performance with a single card and then CrossfireX and it's the same.

[Undermoose]

Looks like I'm not getting CrossfireX performance because it's not working. It's enabled, but I tested performance with a single card and then CrossfireX and it's the same.

So I removed all the AMD drivers, pulled one card out, installed AMD Catalyst drivers again, and on a single EAH 6970 my system is flying! Never seen it faster, 7.9 on everything but CPU (i7-2600K at 7.6) and Disk (3gb sata at 5.9) in Windows experience. 7.9 on memory too, I'm doing 19,000 MB/s on AIDA memory read/write benchmarks without tweaking my system at all.

So why is CrossfireX so broken on this Extreme7 Gen3 motherboard? 6.0 on Windows experience and laggy gaming, time to stick to one GPU perhaps. I'm not sure where to look.