Final thoughts and rating

Readers wanting access to the very best CPU technology need to invest in a Sandy Bridge Extreme CPU and X79 chipset-based motherboard. Setting aside the pros and cons of this platform against the mainstream 6-series boards and upcoming Ivy Bridge-support 7-series, X79 simply isn't cheap.

£170 is the minimum one pays for an X79 offering, rising up to £350 for the Kitchen Sink™ model. ASRock plies the low end of the market with the Extreme 4, currently retailing for £175 or so, and it's refreshing to see that genuine thought has been put into the choice of features, layout and overall appeal.

The Extreme 4 is capable in all areas, featuring a strong BIOS, well-chosen extras and solid performance. It punches well above its financial weight and we would have little to criticise even if was priced at £225, given just how X79 boards stack up.

ASRock's been make the right noises of late. The Extreme 4 represents a wake-up call to other manufacturers, for you can have a decent X79 board without (totally) breaking the bank.

The Good

Good layout, features, looks
Easy-to-use BIOS
Competitive price

The Bad

£175, while cheap for X79, is still a lot of money

HEXUS Rating

ASRock X79 Extreme 4 motherboard

HEXUS Awards

ASRock X79 Extreme 4 motherboard

HEXUS Where2Buy

The ASRock X79 Extreme 4 motherboard can be purchased from Scan.co.uk.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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£175 is going to be alot cheaper than the new Ivy Bridge equivalent - We all know Intel like to milk every penny they can get and considering they have no real competition at this end of the market, they will milk every penny they can.

Fair play to ASrock though for bringing this nice board to the lower end of the market.

I'm not sure that this product makes sense. Low cost Enthusiast seems a contradiction, but fair play to ASRock for putting a budget version out there, albeit @ £175!!

One of the advantages of Asus, specifically the ROG branded boards is that they have historically support Xeon chips. I wonder if this does?

Good review - would have been great to see a bit more on the boards performance - max overclock, and just how noisy is that sb fan?

I personally wouldn't buy this because I'm looking at the SR-X and the Asus equivalent dual socket board as that gives me the functionality that I'm looking for. This does look like a tremendous offering that can only keep the pricing of the branded brethren in check.