Asrock Z87E-ITX

By far the coolest Intel 8 series motherboard we have at the moment is the Asrock Z87E-ITX, as this footling 17cm ten 17cm motherboard not only features the Z87 chipset with support for processors such as the Core i7-4770K, just with a full length PCIe x16 slot it can also handle the latest and greatest GPU's.

The crazy affair about the Z87E-ITX is that you lot would look to miss out on a lot of features due to its tiny size. Notwithstanding that's not really the case, as the board support six USB 3.0 ports, six SATA 6Gb/s ports, PCIe x16, 2 full size DDR3 DIMMs, eSATA, DisplayPort and wireless.

Although many of these features are provided by the Z87 chipset, ane characteristic is more than unique to the Z87E-ITX. Included is a brand new IEEE 802.11ac wireless adapter which supports high-throughput wireless local area networks on the 5GHz ring. This new standard is yet backwards uniform with the 802.11n two.4GHz band.

This specification has expected multi-station WLAN throughput of at least one gigabit per second and a single link throughput of at least 500 megabits per second (500 Mbit/south). This is achieved by extending the air interface concepts embraced past 802.11n: wider RF bandwidth (up to 160 MHz), more MIMO spatial streams (up to 8), multi-user MIMO, and high-density modulation (upwardly to 256 QAM).

Again Asrock has used the high-finish Realtek ALC1150 audio codec supporting seven.1 channel HD audio with a TI NE5532 Premium Headset Amplifier which supports upwards to 600ohm headphones. And in that location's also cap less Direct Bulldoze technology and back up for DTS Connect.

Nigh Mini-ITX boards but offering ii SATA ports, some go every bit far as to include four, but we have never seen six before. While it is true that virtually Mini-ITX systems cannot even support six SATA devices, information technology could be possible when using SSD'southward, either mode the option is nice to have.

However what we really similar is the mSATA 6Gb/s connector on the rear of the lath that supports total length cards. This ways it is possible to install an SSD such every bit the M4 mSATA 512GB on the rear of this board and receive full 6Gb/southward throughput. This in itself is a vital feature for a Mini-ITX board and over again models in the past take either just featured mSATA 3Gb/south connections or just used half size connectors.

Around at the I/O console we accept two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, PS/2 port, DVI, Displayport, HDMI, eSATA, LAN, optical sound out and v audio jacks. There are also two wireless antenna connections and a CMOS reset switch.