We’ve have a strong affection for the Extreme4 over the generations that it’s been a fixture for ASRock as, in the past, it has supplied an excellent balance of features for the price-tag. Have we been impressed by this latest Z490 Extreme4? In one word, yes!
While the styling on any motherboard is highly subjective, we feel that the Z170 Extreme4 was the best looking we’ve seen for this class of product and it’s a shame that ASRock has departed from the distinct black/gold theme they were once known for. There is plenty of integrated RGB lighting across Extreme4 for those who are interested in applying some colour and we even get four headers dedicated to lighting strips and other devices.
Storage is well balanced, providing sufficient SATA and PCI-Express driven M.2 slots. Much like other offerings we’ve encountered, while the current Intel 10th Gen. processors don’t support PCIe 4.0, Extreme4 has hardware support for it, which is a good future-proofing. In terms of USB, while there is plenty of allocation for the front panel, the back panel does appear to be quite sparsely populated. It also doesn’t help that what little USB ports we have are taken up by 2x USB 2.0 ports which we expect to see phased out in 2020.
In terms of overall performance ASRock’s Extreme4 performs very well and even managed to ascend to overclocking prowess seen on much more expensive models. Extreme4 managed to nudge all cores on our i9-10900K to 5.3GHz with 1.35v which is an impressive achievement.
This model is placed within the lower price bracket for Intel Z490s and comes in at: GBP £187 | USD $185 | AUD $379. For that asking price we would expect to see WiFi included and some extra USB 3.2 ports on that back panel.
The Z490 Extreme4 provides a good balance of features, performs very well and won’t break the bank!
Pros
+ Equipped with plenty of RGB lighting
+ Excellent overclocking ability
+ Offers great performance
+ Features three front panel USB headers
+ Has future support for PCIe 4.0
+ Uses strengthened PCI Express slots
+ M.2 slots feature thermal cooling
Cons
- No standoff support on right-edge due to shape/design
- Needs more USB on back panel
- No WiFi included out of the box
+ Equipped with plenty of RGB lighting
+ Excellent overclocking ability
+ Offers great performance
+ Features three front panel USB headers
+ Has future support for PCIe 4.0
+ Uses strengthened PCI Express slots
+ M.2 slots feature thermal cooling
Cons
- No standoff support on right-edge due to shape/design
- Needs more USB on back panel
- No WiFi included out of the box
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