ASRock Z87E-ITX Socket 1150 Dual Channel DDR3 2933+ / 6 x SATA3 / 2 x USB 3.0 / Mini-ITX Motherboard

I upgraded my otherwise fine motherboard to this board specifically for the fact that it had 6 SATA slots (for a RAID array), 1 mSATA slot (for a boot drive), and a miniPCI slot pre-populated with an 802.11ac Wifi card. This is the only board I could find that had that mix of features. Unfortunately, after assembling everything I discovered that the mSATA slot is shared with one of the regular SATA ports, meaning the total number of drives allowed is 6. Similarly, the eSATA port is also shared with an internal SATA port, so that isn't an option either.This is a fine board, and perhaps I should have done more research, but I still feel misled by the fact that this shared SATA stuff isn't listed in any of the specs at any site I've looked at.

I have been unable to fin fault with this mini-ITX mobo. I was initially concerned with the cramped architecture but heat hasn't factored in to any significant degree, so building out mini cases work well and are an attractive option to the larger desktop/tower needs of other boards.As for ASRock, as a PC Tech, I've built my share of high end systems using top tier motherboards from the likes of ASUS and Gigabyte. They have nothing over this unit. In fact, I specifically look for ASRock boards when building systems now.

This board is the new standard. All motherboards should have the options that this includes at a minimum. MSATA port + 802.11ac wifi + Bluetooth + much much more in the same package. It's unbelievable what flexibility and compactness can be achieved with this board. All others in it's class fall short in some way. This one doesn't force you to compromise. Wish the AMD socket FM2+ version (asrock fm2a88x-itx+) had the same MSATA on the bottom as well as the 802.11ac wifi + Bluetooth. That one only has one mini pcie/msata slot so you have to choose.

When I bought this I shelled out $200, the company seemed solid and I knew with all the stuff it came with it would be powerful. Well it was, for a little over 3 years, and then it died, and guess how long the company has a warranty for...yep. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! I lost a lot of confidence in the company.

I won't go into a list of features since they are listed in the description. Suffice to say it works well. The BIOS is easy to set up, and easy to tweak, adjust for SSDs, etc. The utilities that come with it make it easy to control everything, including optimizing it for power, standard use or energy saving use. It has a comprehensive set of connectors that should be more than adequate for most users. Still, this is a mini iTX board, so any connector or header that is lacking is hard to make up for with external boards. If I could make one change it would be to have an internal 1394 header. It's true that almost all users, including me, will have newer equipment that won't need it. But there are plenty of people with decades worth of old digital video tapes who could use one. So it falls short of perfect but that won't affect most users. In fact it should be overkill for most users.Installation is simple, as you'd expect since such a board should use a standard footprint. But some boards have connectors in less optimal places, making it difficult in some cases to place cables. This had no such problems.The included utility for installing drivers works OK, but isn't the smoothest I have seen. If you use the built in Intel graphics in conjunction with a compatible processor, you will need to install its drivers before you might be able to see the screen on the driver utility without major corruption, even though everything else I encountered looked fine prior to its install. So I was flying blind at first but once that was installed the rest went smoothly. That might have to do with your default font size, but I can't be sure.For me, this is far more motherboard than I will need for its current application, which is as an HTPC. But given the price I see no need to compromise. Even with the lowest end i3 listed as compatible on their website, this outperforms what was a higher end Intel Quad core processor when Windows 7 came out. For what it's worth, the throughput from an SSD on this is the best I've seen from the same drive on a variety of machines, and if you care about WEI, it registered at the top score, despite the SSD being older technology.With a higher end CPU, it could beat some of my better PCs, and if not for the limited number of slots and lack of 1394 support, (of course all mini iTX boards are limited with respect to expansion slots) I would see this as a rival to any larger board. One thing that surprises me though is a scant two fan headers. That's more of a limitation that will affect commonplace systems.Upgrading the BIOS was simple, and I was able to do it automatically with a utility from within Windows. It was as easy as could be from within Windows, but I have seen more flexible ways on other brands that could literally allow for an update even without a processor installed. That's probably not a real world concern, but I did once had a motherboard that supported newer processors with a BIOS upgrade. If that ever becomes the case with this, you will need an older processor to do the upgrade. So it doesn't have every advanced feature of every motherboard out there, and I do have newer ASUS motherboards that have features that this lacks, and vice versa. It's not the ultimate in motherboards, but might have every feature you need and more.UPDATE: 15 months later it failed, with a five beep code. This is listed on Amazon as having a one year warranty, but ASRock goes by the seller I got it from, so I had a three year warranty. I asked for an RMA, put everything requested into their system, but didn't hear back. I logged onto their system to check the status, and it showed there was an RMA number. I emailed back and said I never got any information about where to send it or what to do next, and two days later i got the email that the RMA had been approved. I sent in the board, and a day after they received it, I got an email saying that the replacement was on the way. It showed up the next day and works fine. Although it took eight days for me to get the RMA approval, turnaround time was much faster than expected. I don't know how soon it took before the online system showed the RMA as approved, and it may have been the case that it was approved quickly but the email never made it. Overall, nobody wants a board to fail, but I never had a company turn around so fast for an RMA on a motherboard.

I paired this with a Cooler Master Elite 120, i3 4130 and a HD 7950. Fitting all this in the case was quite involved but made easier by the sensible layout of the board with easily accessible and decent header/power placement.I took a few drivers off the support CD, particularly for the Wifi card to get me attached to the net but newer ones seem to be available. On that note, the included wifi antenna is a flexible wire leading to a small square collector. It seems to do the job well, particularly on 2.4GHz band but 5GHz can be a little flaky. It's connected to a Asus RT-N66U which is a very decent bit of kit and other devices do seem to fair better on the 5GHz band so be aware of that.The BIOS on this board is the first I've encountered with sound effects. They don't really add anything to the experience but it's stuffed full of all the options you would want for almost every eventuality. Obviously with a Haswell i3 I haven't overclocked (not least because it's locked but also the heat output) so I can't speak to the overclocking abilities of the board unfortunately.In about 3 weeks of use with Windows 7 everything has been nice and stable, certainly nothing attributable to the board at least. I'll be undertaking a switch to Linux/Windows 8 shortly - not sure which I'll end up on (perhaps Win8 if drivers don't work out) but I'll update with any relevant info once I'm done.In all I'd say his is a great bit of kit that offers huge flexibility in a tiny package and won't have you tearing your hair out with random failures and overheats.

This is a really nice board. I've got this board with a Plextor PX-128M5M (msata) and 8GB of Crucial Ballistix which both work fine. Heatsink is a Thermalright AXP-100, which is a tight fit with the msata on the back, but it didn't seem to interfere too much.On the wireless - the drivers on the asrock page are massively outdated (from mid last year), so I tried to install some later ones from June 2013 that I found on a dell website. I've got this paired with an ASUS RT-AC66U (802.11ac) router. 2.4 GHZ works fine, but I cannot get 5GHZ to pair at all. My laptop works fine on 5GHZ so it's definitely the card installed on this board. There doesn't seem to be any mention of AC in the driver advanced page either. So for now I've just got it running at 2.4 which is a shame as this was one of the reasons that I bought this board.

I got this motherboard for a small server project, mainly because of its 6 SATA ports and an mSATA port. The layout is really good and it certainly is a fine example of the current offerings. 4 stars only because it turned out that the out of the 6 onboard SATA ports 2 are shared -- one with the eSATA and one with the mSATA on the back of the board. Another slight disappointment was that the supplied Broadcom BCM4352 mini PCI-E wifi+bluetooth card is not supported out of the box on Linux.

This is an excellent board for a Mini Server. Probably the best Bios I have seen in a long time and the addition of being able to update the bios directly from te bios screen (provided you have a network connection).

I love everything about this board !Latest AC WiFi standard and Bluetooth.mSATA slot for an SSD (I'm using to boost my HHD)High quality Realtek ALC1150 AudioPCI-E version 3