Today at OCinside.de we test a very small but powerful Mini-ITX motherboard, the ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac with Wi-Fi 802 11ac / Bluetooth v4.0 module and external WiFi antenna. Amazing – on the top of the mini ITX mainboard is not enough space to meet all your wishes, so ASRock has continued without further ADO on the back of this ITX motherboard. The ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac motherboard is based on the Intel Z97 chipset and offers even a M.2 slot, a mini PCIe slot and a PCIe slot, up to six USB 3.0 ports, up to six SATA3 ports, SATA Express, digital sound output via optical S/PDIF output, TPM, DisplayPort, DVI-I, HDMI output, HDMI input, Gigabit LAN port, and much more, which is by no means usual for such tiny boards. Let us see what else this LGA1150 ITX mainboard has to offer.
Result …
The ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac LGA1150 DDR3 motherboard would be almost a pity to build a small ITX Office PC, because this Mini-ITX mainboard is a high-quality ITX platform with a great basic equipment for such a small space and allows the construction of a high-end ITX HTPC or ITX gaming PC for high demands and with overclocking features.
This small ASRock power dwarf reaches almost the basic equipment of a full-grown ATX motherboard, because the ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac offers a PCI Express slot, six SATA3 ports, a M.2 with 6 GB/s, a mini PCIe slot that is already equipped with a WiFi 802.11 ac + BT 4.0 module, a SATA express port, up to six possible USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit LAN connection, 7.1 sound with DTS Connect, analog sound output via five jacks, digital sound output via optical SPDIF, HDMI Input, depending on the CPU used a graphics output via HDMI, DVI-I, DisplayPort and much more.
All in all this ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac is an absolutely great motherboard that offers many OC options and provides a top basic equipment and thus is the first ITX motherboard receiving our Redaktion ocinside.de Overclocking Dream Award 11/2014.
Here you can buy the ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac motherboard. *AdSpecial thanks to ASRock for their support.
* All LGA 1150 motherboard reviews since 01.07.2014 are based on an Intel Core i5-4670K CPU, MSI Radeon R9 280 Twin Frozr Gaming 3GB PCI Express 3.0 GrafikkarteSapphire HD6870 1024MB ATI Radeon HD6870 PCI Express 2.0 video card, 2x 2048MB Crucial DDR3-1333/PC3-10600 memory modules, Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600W power supply unit and the following software configuration: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, SiSoftware Sandra 2013, Futuremark 3DMark and 3DMark06 (OC software is available in the Links & Downloads section). All benchmark results only offer a comparison among themselves for a rough motherboard performance comparison.
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