There's not exactly a shortage of X79 motherboards to choose from, but if you're looking for something eye-catching to go with your new Sandy Bridge Extreme processor, few options are as striking as ASRock's latest range.
Dubbed the X79 Extreme, it comes in five unique flavours that all carry a lush black-and-silver colour scheme. ASRock appears to have mastered aesthetics, and the feature set ain't bad, either.
The top-of-the-line X79 Extreme9 (pictured above) features a massive line up of five PCIe x16 slots that'll run at x8, x8, x8, x8, x8. Plenty of scope for expansion? Perhaps, but the PCIe lanes do appear to be tightly packed, which might explain why ASRock recommends a three-way CrossFire or three-way SLI configuration at x16, x16, x8 speeds.
Graphics are very much catered for, as are the needs of overclockers. This monster board claims to be "the KING of the overclocking beasts" and offers a 16 + 2 power phase, a good littering of heatsinks and an on-board fan.
It's very much the mad man in ASRock's five-way line up, but the one that's catching our eye is the X79 Extreme4-M, pictured below.
Making use of the tidy Micro-ATX form factor, the Extreme4-M provides the power of Intel's X79 chipset in a compact 244mm x 244mm frame. And with three PCIe x16 slots (with SLI and Crossfire support), 7.1-channel HD audio, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, SATA 6Gbps and a 6+2 power phase design, it isn't exactly skimping on features.
That on-board fan looks like it could be a nuisance, but ASRock tells us it'll only kick into life when temperatures reach a "a certain temperature under heavy-loading".
Not a bad compromise by any means. What's more of a concern is availability, as we're told that certain models may not be sold worldwide. We'll get a clearer picture in the coming days, but right now, only the middle-of-the-pack X79 Extreme4 has appeared at UK retail, carrying a price tag of around £190.
