Building a PC with the ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus Motherboard: A Comprehensive Guide

When it comes to building a PC, one of the most crucial aspects is selecting a motherboard that meets your needs and provides a smooth user experience. The ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard is an excellent choice for those looking to build a powerful system with advanced features. In this article, we will delve into the details of this motherboard and explore its key features, capabilities, and what makes it stand out from other motherboards in its class.

Sale You Can Get USB 3.1 There as Well

One of the benefits of using the ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard is that you can get USB 3.1 on sale. This is a great feature for those who want to take advantage of fast data transfer rates and high-speed peripherals. The sale price of this motherboard makes it an attractive option for those looking to build a powerful system without breaking the bank.

Dr. Debug is a Feature of This Motherboard

The ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard features a diagnostic tool called Dr. Debug, which allows users to diagnose issues with their system. This feature is particularly useful when troubleshooting problems with RAM or other components that won't post. The manual that comes with the motherboard provides a handy table of codes and explanations for each code displayed on the onboard segment LED display at the bottom edge of the motherboard.

Understanding CPU Installation

One of the most critical aspects of building a PC is installing the CPU correctly. It's essential to understand that the CPU is wired directly into the memory, which can be confusing for those who are new to building PCs. The manual that comes with the ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard provides detailed instructions on how to install the CPU correctly. However, it's worth noting that even experienced users should take care when installing the CPU, as improper installation can result in serious problems.

PCIe and Expansion Slots

The ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard has four PCIe slots, which are available for expansion. These slots can be used to connect peripherals such as graphics cards, sound cards, or network cards. The motherboard also features two PCI Express x1 slots that can be used for additional connectivity.

PCIe Lane Limitation

When it comes to building a PC with the ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard, it's essential to consider PCIe lane limitation. Some motherboards have limited PCIe lanes, which can result in reduced performance or compatibility issues. However, the ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard has four more PCIe gen 3 lanes than its predecessor, making it an excellent choice for those who need high-speed connectivity.

Wireless Connectivity

The ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard does not have onboard wireless capabilities, but it does feature a half-size mini PCI Express slot that can be used to connect a combination Bluetooth and 802.11 AC wireless adapter. This provides users with an additional option for wireless connectivity, although it may require some creative installation.

Expansion Options

The ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard offers several expansion options, including four PCIe slots and two PCI Express x1 slots. However, depending on the specific build configuration, some of these ports and m.2 slots may be disabled to ensure compatibility and optimal performance.

Building with This Motherboard

When it comes to building a PC with the ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard, there are several factors to consider. The motherboard features advanced capabilities such as USB 3.1, PCIe expansion options, and Wi-Fi connectivity. However, it's essential to double-check compatibility and ensure that all peripherals will function correctly.

Conclusion

The ASRock Z170 Extreme 7 Plus motherboard is an excellent choice for those looking to build a powerful system with advanced features. Its USB 3.1, PCIe expansion options, and wireless connectivity make it an attractive option for users who need high-speed data transfer rates and reliable peripherals. By understanding the key features and capabilities of this motherboard, users can ensure a smooth user experience and take full advantage of its advanced features.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI've got something in my pocket and it's terribly uncomfortable so we're taking a look at the azrock z170 extreme 7 plus this motherboard is for Skylake so if you've been living under a rock and you don't know what Skylake is you should go watch our Skylake introduction video although I'm betting you're probably just considering oh there Skylake options we should look at that so the z170 chipset is a different motherboard socket and that's socket 11 51 there are I3 i5 and i7 CPUs available as well as eventually probably Pentium and Celeron variants that will use that that type of a socket the 1151 socket is necessary because Intel has moved away from the fully integrated voltage regulator uh you guys may have seen the fully integrated voltage regulator unlike the Haswell processors it was the Fiverr and it's going to be our Salvation in the processor is going to be able to respond more quickly to ramp ups and power and blah blah blah and it definitely did do all of those things there are are notes that I've seen in design briefs that uh suggest that the voltage circuitry in the sky Lake actually ramps up it's how much it needs from like an idle state to a production State uh slowly so as not to overload the vrm componentry on the motherboard because one of the reasons to have the Fiverr on the chip was to give the CPU the ability to demand more power more quickly and it's not really like that with Skylake anymore because the power delivery circuitry has moved back onto the motherboard but that means that the overclocking head room should be a little bit better and so the z170 extreme 7 also includes some overclocking features now for our sample CPU we have been able to hit 4.7 GHz on that that is with good water cooling and disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer this is basically a launch Day video or very soon after a launch of Skylake we don't have a lot of production units to sample with however our internal sources that have been testing the production lines say that that about 50% of the SK L desktop CPUs that's the I5 and the i7 6700 K and 6600 K those are unlocked multiplier CPUs will hit 4.6 GHz about 50% give or take 4.8 GHz is an extremely rare Critter though so if you're looking for a super massive overclock to go from the 4 GHz stock of the i7 version of Skylake to go from 4.0 GHz with a turbo of 4.2 to something more like 4.5 or 4.6 you've got a 50% shot at it 4.7 the the fallof is really rapid 4.8 is going to be pretty rare from what from what we can tell just based on innuendo rumor some crazy Chinese astrology and some other some other variables some other handwavy things so we don't actually know however z170 stream 7 for what it's worth for the CPU that we have we hit 4.7 no problem and that was on a good liquid cooler we were actually using the NZXT Kraken uh x61 basically worked out well for us if you're using a a triple radiator you may be able to do a little bit better than that depending on how much voltage you're able to run it up to and and how much heat you can dissipate but overall this motherboard has a lot more to offer than just overclock ability so in terms of power delivery for the new CPU socket type this is a 12 phase power design that's using the XXL aluminum alloy heat sink 60 amp chokes it's got a dual stack mosfet nichicon 12K Platinum caps and premium chokes for the memory modules as well now this of course is ddr4 so if you're using the z170 chipset by and large it's going to be ddr4 although Skylake does actually support DDR3 on the memory controller and ddr4 although I think I'm not sure about this but I think that the desktop Parts only support ddr4 by default but you can do some trickery to get them to support DDR3 where you're going to see DDR3 is probably on portable devices and low power devices where it's important to maintain low power for this particular board you've got four ddr4 dim slots and I'm happy to report that using our G skill overclocking memory we hit 3 GHz all day long we should be able to hit about 3.4 GHz with this design give or take on the memory clock but this is not an overclocking video we're probably going to do that in another video later I just wanted to report the XMP profile for 3 GHz worked fine with this out of the box no tweaking it was perfect we've actually got four fulllength PCI Express gen 3 slots now the first slot is a by6 slot that can operate in by6 16 or by8 if you're going to use two graphics cards that's going to be a by8 by8 configuration and that's going to pull directly from the PCI Express resources that are available on the CPU now the CPU connects to the chipset through a new thing called DMI 3.0 effectively that opens up four more PCI Express gen 3 Lanes that's available to the rest of the motherboard and that is how azrock has implemented the rest of the peripherals on the system we've actually got three SATA Express ports on this and this actually comes with a SATA Express peripheral which is USB 3.1 adapter now this is just a normal PCI Express as media controller and this shows you that Intel sort of understands that SATA as an as an interface is really just becoming more like a generic bus and so the lines between SATA and PCI Express are blurred even further with the z170 chipset and the evidence for that is with the USB 3.1 front panel connector that comes with this motherboard now it's a 5 and a qu inch form factor which is a little strange I think it should be you know 3 and a half inch or something else maybe maybe an IO back plate version cuz how much would an IO back plate cost to include but it gives you two extra USB 3.1 10 gbit per second ports USB 3.1 type c that's the reversible one and the USB 3.1 type A and that's of course powered by an as media chip and if you look at the interface here we can see that this is basically a PCI Express adapter but on a card and so it comes with a cable that'll go from your PCI Express connector to this front panel connector and so you can use this on the front panel of your computer which is perhaps a more convenient location you know in a lot of the cases that we've tested the USB 3.0 ports on the front of the case maybe have trouble driving like the power hungry you know USB 3.0 flash drives or USB hard drives and that kind of thing that will not be a problem with the USB 3.1 adapter from ASRock it actually has separate power delivery circuitry not only does it uh have the physical connector for the power supply there's also another interface that connects directly to the motherboard with another header that's on the printed circuit board for that so you can deliver quite a bit of power through the USB 3.1 standard and USB type-c in particular for cell phone recharging that kind of thing and ASRock provides that with the connectivity on this this motherboard has three m.2 slots which you can use with PCI Express m.2 ssds including the Intel 750 SSD although you'd have to get an adapter board that will break it out to the u.2 or the minias style connector on the on the m.2 slot because the Intel SSD so fast that it won't fit in the m.2 form factor so you sort of get a cable to go out from that to something else finally with all the PCI Express and m.2 and SATA Express connectivity the Intel rapid storage stuff supports raid on the PCI Express side of things now so if you're using a bunch of these peripherals if you're using a bunch of m.2 drives you can now raid them together so if you want something that's ludicrously fast and dangerous with your data you can run raid zero you could get two m. tws raid zero that and then you're looking at on the order of you know four or five gigabytes per second with the absolute fastest m.2 ssds that you can get putting those in a raate zero just to get as much speed as you can so with all the extra connectivity the USB 3.1 USB 3.1 at the front and the back the extra pcie slots it sort of becomes clear why you need the extra four lanes of PCI Express 3.0 connectivity through the DMI 3.0 interface between the CPU and the rest of the chipset that's why Intel has done that with this particular chipset and that's why this motherboard has been implemented the way that it's been implemented all right let's take a look at the back of the board first off we've got two USB 2.0 ports and a combo PS2 mouse and keyboard Port then we've got a DVI connection that DVI connection supports up to 1920 x 1200 we've got a display port 1.2 connection and HDMI now on the display port connection and the HDMI connection both of those connections should be rated for 3840 by 2160 at 60 HZ or 4096 by whatever at 24 Hertz next to that we've got our as media USB 3.1 10 GB per second USB ports one type A and one type c next to that we've got our two Intel gigabit Lan adapters and then we've got four USB 3.0 ports now for the audio it's a realtech ALC 1150 codec it's a 7.1 Channel with Optical spdif but there is a TI ne5532 premium headset amplifier the headset amplifier supports headsets with a resistance of up to 600 ohms that particular TI opamp is pretty decent on paper although Logan would have to tell you you about the music quality and the particulars about the actual audio codec the capacitors are nichon gold audio capacitors so that should help Elevate the audio quality and in independent tests it has about 115 DB signal to noise ratio if you want to know more about the audio testing let me know because I can actually post a document about that now in terms of other connectivity on this motherboard there is a comp Port header and a TPM header in case you need to use a TPM module that's sort of a security feature there are a total of five four pin fan headers uh that are individually controllable through the UEFI fortunately in the UEFI you can customize each individual fan with your own custom profile if you want and there's also I think four preset fan profiles that you can pick so you've got two headers for the CPU and three headers for chassis fans that are sort of scattered conveniently throughout the motherboard there's also of course the front panel audio connector at the corner of the motherboard you've got one Thunderbolt AIC connector and support for Thunderbolt in the UEFI but in order to actually get the Thunderbolt ports you'll have to buy a PCI Express addin card in order to expose the connectivity there you've got one Dr debug LED output that's the two7 segment LED displays that will give you post codes so that you can help diagnose what the situation is with the machine you know should it not post that will help you figure it out in the corner near the ATX power connector you've got a reset button and a power button that's convenient in the front panel header is located at the lower bottom corner of the motherboard this motherboard actually features two bioses it's got two 128 megabit Ami UEFI uh bioses with a multilingual guey support so you've got one main bios and one backup bios the way that you switch switch between them is with a little switch at the bottom edge of the motherboard so if you're doing a UEFI update like the internet Flash and then the power goes out or something goes horribly wrong well you can flip the switch and then use the other bios then you can flip the switch again and actually use the internet update to fix the one that got corrupted now of course the chipset drivers if you are upgrading an existing system you will want to update your drivers before you actually switch systems now here's a hint the disc controller requires xhci drivers now you can operate from the BIOS in ahci mode or in RAID Mode RAID Mode is going to give you a couple of extra options even if you're not really operating in raid including Intel rapid resume and some other things but to really take advantage of those you have to create special partitions on your SSD in order to be able to you know do the fast suspend to RAM and the fast wake up from RAM and those kinds of things there are utilities to help you do that and there are some Utilities in the ufi that will help you get the drivers for things that are operating in those modes this is the first time in a while that I've actually switched you know I sort of we've got a Windows installation that's ready to go on an m.2 Drive I took the m.2 out and put it in this booted it up and it was like inaccessible boot device and that's a sign that things have changed so it may be possible for me to update the drivers on that installation of Windows on a machine that it works on and actually be able to boot up but window you're not really supposed to do it that way like that's the wrong way to do it but I thought it was interesting that enough has changed finally cuz this hasn't happened since I mean I think z77 to Z87 to z97 I've been able to basically take a couple of ssds and sort of carry it Forward just to see what would happen and uh this one would not do that this one I got inaccessible boot device and I think that's owing to the fact that the raid setup and the the chipset drivers in terms of SATA storage on this are just a little different than they used to be so to make a long story short with the driver situation on this motherboard you really want to be running Windows 8 or Windows 10 for full support of everything however Windows 7 is supported so if you're on Windows 7 and you want to use Windows should work fine although you may need to create a driver CD or driver installation USB and copy the drivers necessary to actually run this motherboard onto the USB so that when you do the installer you can actually detect the hard drive because otherwise you boot up and the installer's like I I don't see a hard drive where's the hard drive you got to install the driver so that it can actually see the hard drive the ufi will actually help you do that there's an option in there that will create an installation CD or that will create a driver CD um directly from you know sort of the internet or the resources that are aable in the ufi I did not test that because I do not care about Windows 7 fact I barely care about Windows 8 and Windows 10 good news Linux works great detects all the peripherals on this motherboard Intel everything is good except for the Onboard video the Onboard video has some kind of a problem right now will actually cause the machine to reset I would suggest that you use an addin graphics card if you're going to immediately upgrade to this there's probably going to be a kernel update or something to fix this maybe a problem with the iris Pro Graphics maybe it's something you be fixed in the UEFI I did not diagnose it Beyond just plugging in an SSD booting it and saying hm it reboots when it gets to the graphical initialization part and if you don't need a goey you'll be fine so I have a feeling that there's probably a a kernel command line parameter or something that you can initialize and just tell it like no VGA or something and it would probably initialize just fine and that's probably owing to the updated Graphics in the iris Pro that's actually in the Skylake CPUs those theoretically will bring direct X12 support on the Windows side of things and so Linux because this is launch day probably hasn't been updated for that although I'm kind surprised that it crashes so spectacularly but again it's only one data point your mileage may vary may not really be a big deal but hey with the new platform launch stuff for Haswell is on fire sale right now and that stuff is really going to work well on Linux so if you're looking for Linux and you want a bargain system and you're not ready to upgrade to ddr4 check out the 1150 stuff that's on fire sale you can get USB 3.1 there as well Dr debug is a feature of this motherboard that allows you to diagnose what's wrong like if the ram won't post or whatever it reads out codes there's numeric codes that come on a s segment LED display at the bottom edge of the motherboard and the manual cuz you looked at the manual right has this handy table of what each code actually means and so things can actually be you know d8 in valid password FF please check if the CPU is installed correctly most people don't realize but you know the CPU is wired directly into the memory it's not like the old school days where you know the memory would go into a thing and then and then the thing went into the memory slots I've actually seen several times where a CPU was not installed exact exactly perfectly a machine would post but there would be weird problems with one of the ram slots or two of the ram slots and recing the CPU just sort of fiddling like un loosening it and sort of moving it around the you know quarter of a millimeter that you've got it to play in there and then sort of just bringing the lever back down actually fixed memory problems and interface problems you want to be really careful if you're if you're doing one of these from scratch I'd suggest that you check out our how to build a PC video um for more information on how to build a PC Not A lot's really changed but the pins are actually in the CPU socket and if you touch those it's game over if you bend those it's game over if you look at those funny and something weird happens it's game over it's not going to work it's going to be really bad so you don't want to touch the CPU you don't want to touch the pens you don't want to set the CPU like down on its Corner in the pin because that's going to ruin everything really honestly installing the CPU is the most harrowing thing about installing about building a computer and if you're just really careful and you just sort of put it in exactly right watch it bunch of our videos cuz we got lots of video of how to do it correctly uh you'll be fine so keep that in mind now our version of this motherboard does not actually have on board Wireless but there is actually a half-size mini PCI Express slot that you could put in a combo Bluetooth and uh you know 802.11 AC Wireless if you want and then there's breakouts on the back so that you could actually put wires there you can also get a version of this motherboard that has built-in Wireless if you need to locate it somewhere that it actually has Wireless I like the fact that this has several m.2 slots because actually a lot of the newer cooler wireless adapters that have Bluetooth and nearfield communication and some of the other you know really high in features are available as mini PCI Express and so the mini PCI Express will actually go into the m.2 slots and because these m.2 slots are wired into the PCI Express Bus it'll work fine you might not use the mini PCI Express slot but you've got both options on this motherboard now it is only a half length slot for that so you're not going to be able to put a cellular radio in or anything like that and actually have it screw in but you know you do have both form factors depending on what kind of a wireless card you want to get now in terms of board layout and in terms of expansion slots you've got four by6 slots now those will work in a by6 configuration with just one slot by 8 by8 with two slots or by 8X 4x4 or by 8X 4x4 by one and then you've got two PCI Express by one slots that're also available for expansion now depending on what combination of peripherals you use some of those ports and some of the m.2 slots may be disabled so depending on what your actual build is you may want to double check how you plan to use your peripherals to know if you're going to have enough PCI Express Lanes unless you're really starting to do a lot of crazy stuff like you've got you know SLI plus a lot of m.2 connectivity plus SATA Express you're probably not going to run into a problem with lanes and keep in mind effectively Skylake has four more PCI Express gen 3 Lanes than Haswell and socket 1150 did so in terms of running a lot of peripherals you're going to have a lot more connectivity than you did on on prior platforms so the azrock z170 extreme 7 plus what do you guys think you guys want to see a build with this let us know in the Forum over at Tech syndicate.com I'm wendle and I'm signing out and I'll see you next timeI've got something in my pocket and it's terribly uncomfortable so we're taking a look at the azrock z170 extreme 7 plus this motherboard is for Skylake so if you've been living under a rock and you don't know what Skylake is you should go watch our Skylake introduction video although I'm betting you're probably just considering oh there Skylake options we should look at that so the z170 chipset is a different motherboard socket and that's socket 11 51 there are I3 i5 and i7 CPUs available as well as eventually probably Pentium and Celeron variants that will use that that type of a socket the 1151 socket is necessary because Intel has moved away from the fully integrated voltage regulator uh you guys may have seen the fully integrated voltage regulator unlike the Haswell processors it was the Fiverr and it's going to be our Salvation in the processor is going to be able to respond more quickly to ramp ups and power and blah blah blah and it definitely did do all of those things there are are notes that I've seen in design briefs that uh suggest that the voltage circuitry in the sky Lake actually ramps up it's how much it needs from like an idle state to a production State uh slowly so as not to overload the vrm componentry on the motherboard because one of the reasons to have the Fiverr on the chip was to give the CPU the ability to demand more power more quickly and it's not really like that with Skylake anymore because the power delivery circuitry has moved back onto the motherboard but that means that the overclocking head room should be a little bit better and so the z170 extreme 7 also includes some overclocking features now for our sample CPU we have been able to hit 4.7 GHz on that that is with good water cooling and disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer this is basically a launch Day video or very soon after a launch of Skylake we don't have a lot of production units to sample with however our internal sources that have been testing the production lines say that that about 50% of the SK L desktop CPUs that's the I5 and the i7 6700 K and 6600 K those are unlocked multiplier CPUs will hit 4.6 GHz about 50% give or take 4.8 GHz is an extremely rare Critter though so if you're looking for a super massive overclock to go from the 4 GHz stock of the i7 version of Skylake to go from 4.0 GHz with a turbo of 4.2 to something more like 4.5 or 4.6 you've got a 50% shot at it 4.7 the the fallof is really rapid 4.8 is going to be pretty rare from what from what we can tell just based on innuendo rumor some crazy Chinese astrology and some other some other variables some other handwavy things so we don't actually know however z170 stream 7 for what it's worth for the CPU that we have we hit 4.7 no problem and that was on a good liquid cooler we were actually using the NZXT Kraken uh x61 basically worked out well for us if you're using a a triple radiator you may be able to do a little bit better than that depending on how much voltage you're able to run it up to and and how much heat you can dissipate but overall this motherboard has a lot more to offer than just overclock ability so in terms of power delivery for the new CPU socket type this is a 12 phase power design that's using the XXL aluminum alloy heat sink 60 amp chokes it's got a dual stack mosfet nichicon 12K Platinum caps and premium chokes for the memory modules as well now this of course is ddr4 so if you're using the z170 chipset by and large it's going to be ddr4 although Skylake does actually support DDR3 on the memory controller and ddr4 although I think I'm not sure about this but I think that the desktop Parts only support ddr4 by default but you can do some trickery to get them to support DDR3 where you're going to see DDR3 is probably on portable devices and low power devices where it's important to maintain low power for this particular board you've got four ddr4 dim slots and I'm happy to report that using our G skill overclocking memory we hit 3 GHz all day long we should be able to hit about 3.4 GHz with this design give or take on the memory clock but this is not an overclocking video we're probably going to do that in another video later I just wanted to report the XMP profile for 3 GHz worked fine with this out of the box no tweaking it was perfect we've actually got four fulllength PCI Express gen 3 slots now the first slot is a by6 slot that can operate in by6 16 or by8 if you're going to use two graphics cards that's going to be a by8 by8 configuration and that's going to pull directly from the PCI Express resources that are available on the CPU now the CPU connects to the chipset through a new thing called DMI 3.0 effectively that opens up four more PCI Express gen 3 Lanes that's available to the rest of the motherboard and that is how azrock has implemented the rest of the peripherals on the system we've actually got three SATA Express ports on this and this actually comes with a SATA Express peripheral which is USB 3.1 adapter now this is just a normal PCI Express as media controller and this shows you that Intel sort of understands that SATA as an as an interface is really just becoming more like a generic bus and so the lines between SATA and PCI Express are blurred even further with the z170 chipset and the evidence for that is with the USB 3.1 front panel connector that comes with this motherboard now it's a 5 and a qu inch form factor which is a little strange I think it should be you know 3 and a half inch or something else maybe maybe an IO back plate version cuz how much would an IO back plate cost to include but it gives you two extra USB 3.1 10 gbit per second ports USB 3.1 type c that's the reversible one and the USB 3.1 type A and that's of course powered by an as media chip and if you look at the interface here we can see that this is basically a PCI Express adapter but on a card and so it comes with a cable that'll go from your PCI Express connector to this front panel connector and so you can use this on the front panel of your computer which is perhaps a more convenient location you know in a lot of the cases that we've tested the USB 3.0 ports on the front of the case maybe have trouble driving like the power hungry you know USB 3.0 flash drives or USB hard drives and that kind of thing that will not be a problem with the USB 3.1 adapter from ASRock it actually has separate power delivery circuitry not only does it uh have the physical connector for the power supply there's also another interface that connects directly to the motherboard with another header that's on the printed circuit board for that so you can deliver quite a bit of power through the USB 3.1 standard and USB type-c in particular for cell phone recharging that kind of thing and ASRock provides that with the connectivity on this this motherboard has three m.2 slots which you can use with PCI Express m.2 ssds including the Intel 750 SSD although you'd have to get an adapter board that will break it out to the u.2 or the minias style connector on the on the m.2 slot because the Intel SSD so fast that it won't fit in the m.2 form factor so you sort of get a cable to go out from that to something else finally with all the PCI Express and m.2 and SATA Express connectivity the Intel rapid storage stuff supports raid on the PCI Express side of things now so if you're using a bunch of these peripherals if you're using a bunch of m.2 drives you can now raid them together so if you want something that's ludicrously fast and dangerous with your data you can run raid zero you could get two m. tws raid zero that and then you're looking at on the order of you know four or five gigabytes per second with the absolute fastest m.2 ssds that you can get putting those in a raate zero just to get as much speed as you can so with all the extra connectivity the USB 3.1 USB 3.1 at the front and the back the extra pcie slots it sort of becomes clear why you need the extra four lanes of PCI Express 3.0 connectivity through the DMI 3.0 interface between the CPU and the rest of the chipset that's why Intel has done that with this particular chipset and that's why this motherboard has been implemented the way that it's been implemented all right let's take a look at the back of the board first off we've got two USB 2.0 ports and a combo PS2 mouse and keyboard Port then we've got a DVI connection that DVI connection supports up to 1920 x 1200 we've got a display port 1.2 connection and HDMI now on the display port connection and the HDMI connection both of those connections should be rated for 3840 by 2160 at 60 HZ or 4096 by whatever at 24 Hertz next to that we've got our as media USB 3.1 10 GB per second USB ports one type A and one type c next to that we've got our two Intel gigabit Lan adapters and then we've got four USB 3.0 ports now for the audio it's a realtech ALC 1150 codec it's a 7.1 Channel with Optical spdif but there is a TI ne5532 premium headset amplifier the headset amplifier supports headsets with a resistance of up to 600 ohms that particular TI opamp is pretty decent on paper although Logan would have to tell you you about the music quality and the particulars about the actual audio codec the capacitors are nichon gold audio capacitors so that should help Elevate the audio quality and in independent tests it has about 115 DB signal to noise ratio if you want to know more about the audio testing let me know because I can actually post a document about that now in terms of other connectivity on this motherboard there is a comp Port header and a TPM header in case you need to use a TPM module that's sort of a security feature there are a total of five four pin fan headers uh that are individually controllable through the UEFI fortunately in the UEFI you can customize each individual fan with your own custom profile if you want and there's also I think four preset fan profiles that you can pick so you've got two headers for the CPU and three headers for chassis fans that are sort of scattered conveniently throughout the motherboard there's also of course the front panel audio connector at the corner of the motherboard you've got one Thunderbolt AIC connector and support for Thunderbolt in the UEFI but in order to actually get the Thunderbolt ports you'll have to buy a PCI Express addin card in order to expose the connectivity there you've got one Dr debug LED output that's the two7 segment LED displays that will give you post codes so that you can help diagnose what the situation is with the machine you know should it not post that will help you figure it out in the corner near the ATX power connector you've got a reset button and a power button that's convenient in the front panel header is located at the lower bottom corner of the motherboard this motherboard actually features two bioses it's got two 128 megabit Ami UEFI uh bioses with a multilingual guey support so you've got one main bios and one backup bios the way that you switch switch between them is with a little switch at the bottom edge of the motherboard so if you're doing a UEFI update like the internet Flash and then the power goes out or something goes horribly wrong well you can flip the switch and then use the other bios then you can flip the switch again and actually use the internet update to fix the one that got corrupted now of course the chipset drivers if you are upgrading an existing system you will want to update your drivers before you actually switch systems now here's a hint the disc controller requires xhci drivers now you can operate from the BIOS in ahci mode or in RAID Mode RAID Mode is going to give you a couple of extra options even if you're not really operating in raid including Intel rapid resume and some other things but to really take advantage of those you have to create special partitions on your SSD in order to be able to you know do the fast suspend to RAM and the fast wake up from RAM and those kinds of things there are utilities to help you do that and there are some Utilities in the ufi that will help you get the drivers for things that are operating in those modes this is the first time in a while that I've actually switched you know I sort of we've got a Windows installation that's ready to go on an m.2 Drive I took the m.2 out and put it in this booted it up and it was like inaccessible boot device and that's a sign that things have changed so it may be possible for me to update the drivers on that installation of Windows on a machine that it works on and actually be able to boot up but window you're not really supposed to do it that way like that's the wrong way to do it but I thought it was interesting that enough has changed finally cuz this hasn't happened since I mean I think z77 to Z87 to z97 I've been able to basically take a couple of ssds and sort of carry it Forward just to see what would happen and uh this one would not do that this one I got inaccessible boot device and I think that's owing to the fact that the raid setup and the the chipset drivers in terms of SATA storage on this are just a little different than they used to be so to make a long story short with the driver situation on this motherboard you really want to be running Windows 8 or Windows 10 for full support of everything however Windows 7 is supported so if you're on Windows 7 and you want to use Windows should work fine although you may need to create a driver CD or driver installation USB and copy the drivers necessary to actually run this motherboard onto the USB so that when you do the installer you can actually detect the hard drive because otherwise you boot up and the installer's like I I don't see a hard drive where's the hard drive you got to install the driver so that it can actually see the hard drive the ufi will actually help you do that there's an option in there that will create an installation CD or that will create a driver CD um directly from you know sort of the internet or the resources that are aable in the ufi I did not test that because I do not care about Windows 7 fact I barely care about Windows 8 and Windows 10 good news Linux works great detects all the peripherals on this motherboard Intel everything is good except for the Onboard video the Onboard video has some kind of a problem right now will actually cause the machine to reset I would suggest that you use an addin graphics card if you're going to immediately upgrade to this there's probably going to be a kernel update or something to fix this maybe a problem with the iris Pro Graphics maybe it's something you be fixed in the UEFI I did not diagnose it Beyond just plugging in an SSD booting it and saying hm it reboots when it gets to the graphical initialization part and if you don't need a goey you'll be fine so I have a feeling that there's probably a a kernel command line parameter or something that you can initialize and just tell it like no VGA or something and it would probably initialize just fine and that's probably owing to the updated Graphics in the iris Pro that's actually in the Skylake CPUs those theoretically will bring direct X12 support on the Windows side of things and so Linux because this is launch day probably hasn't been updated for that although I'm kind surprised that it crashes so spectacularly but again it's only one data point your mileage may vary may not really be a big deal but hey with the new platform launch stuff for Haswell is on fire sale right now and that stuff is really going to work well on Linux so if you're looking for Linux and you want a bargain system and you're not ready to upgrade to ddr4 check out the 1150 stuff that's on fire sale you can get USB 3.1 there as well Dr debug is a feature of this motherboard that allows you to diagnose what's wrong like if the ram won't post or whatever it reads out codes there's numeric codes that come on a s segment LED display at the bottom edge of the motherboard and the manual cuz you looked at the manual right has this handy table of what each code actually means and so things can actually be you know d8 in valid password FF please check if the CPU is installed correctly most people don't realize but you know the CPU is wired directly into the memory it's not like the old school days where you know the memory would go into a thing and then and then the thing went into the memory slots I've actually seen several times where a CPU was not installed exact exactly perfectly a machine would post but there would be weird problems with one of the ram slots or two of the ram slots and recing the CPU just sort of fiddling like un loosening it and sort of moving it around the you know quarter of a millimeter that you've got it to play in there and then sort of just bringing the lever back down actually fixed memory problems and interface problems you want to be really careful if you're if you're doing one of these from scratch I'd suggest that you check out our how to build a PC video um for more information on how to build a PC Not A lot's really changed but the pins are actually in the CPU socket and if you touch those it's game over if you bend those it's game over if you look at those funny and something weird happens it's game over it's not going to work it's going to be really bad so you don't want to touch the CPU you don't want to touch the pens you don't want to set the CPU like down on its Corner in the pin because that's going to ruin everything really honestly installing the CPU is the most harrowing thing about installing about building a computer and if you're just really careful and you just sort of put it in exactly right watch it bunch of our videos cuz we got lots of video of how to do it correctly uh you'll be fine so keep that in mind now our version of this motherboard does not actually have on board Wireless but there is actually a half-size mini PCI Express slot that you could put in a combo Bluetooth and uh you know 802.11 AC Wireless if you want and then there's breakouts on the back so that you could actually put wires there you can also get a version of this motherboard that has built-in Wireless if you need to locate it somewhere that it actually has Wireless I like the fact that this has several m.2 slots because actually a lot of the newer cooler wireless adapters that have Bluetooth and nearfield communication and some of the other you know really high in features are available as mini PCI Express and so the mini PCI Express will actually go into the m.2 slots and because these m.2 slots are wired into the PCI Express Bus it'll work fine you might not use the mini PCI Express slot but you've got both options on this motherboard now it is only a half length slot for that so you're not going to be able to put a cellular radio in or anything like that and actually have it screw in but you know you do have both form factors depending on what kind of a wireless card you want to get now in terms of board layout and in terms of expansion slots you've got four by6 slots now those will work in a by6 configuration with just one slot by 8 by8 with two slots or by 8X 4x4 or by 8X 4x4 by one and then you've got two PCI Express by one slots that're also available for expansion now depending on what combination of peripherals you use some of those ports and some of the m.2 slots may be disabled so depending on what your actual build is you may want to double check how you plan to use your peripherals to know if you're going to have enough PCI Express Lanes unless you're really starting to do a lot of crazy stuff like you've got you know SLI plus a lot of m.2 connectivity plus SATA Express you're probably not going to run into a problem with lanes and keep in mind effectively Skylake has four more PCI Express gen 3 Lanes than Haswell and socket 1150 did so in terms of running a lot of peripherals you're going to have a lot more connectivity than you did on on prior platforms so the azrock z170 extreme 7 plus what do you guys think you guys want to see a build with this let us know in the Forum over at Tech syndicate.com I'm wendle and I'm signing out and I'll see you next time\n"