ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac Review

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I built a system using this board last week and I'm writing this comment on it right now. It's still early, but I like it so far. I got it because it was one of 2 mini-ITX boards that had both USB 3.1(A&C), and an M.2 slot. And it had about double the USB 3.0 ports that the competing Gigabyte board had.

I notice you were using the P1.2 BIOS. When I built this, the current BIOS was 1.5 and one of the major parts of the updates was memory compatibility. I wonder if you'd have any better luck with your memory issues with a newer BIOS. I'm using Ripajaws V @ 2800MHz with a locked i7 6700. It took some fiddling to get it to boot with both sticks in, but eventually it worked with the default XMP profile.
 
Perhaps. It took 10 weeks to get this one published 🙁

 
I would love to get this board, but Newegg in Canada cannot seem to get their act in gear and import the thing. It has been selling fairly well in their US store for over a couple of months already but no love for Canada.

Great and timely article though, I really appreciate these reviews immensely. Thank you very much.
 
I have this motherboard, but unfortunately haven't been able to use it yet. I've tried moving the main drive over from my main system without reinstalling anything but couldn't get the USB ports to work (possibly due to win7), so I can't install drivers and whatnot. I tried to 'preinstall' drivers and then shut down my main system and move the drive over and still couldn't get it to work. Its a very frustrating experience.

All this because I was building a mini ITX box to move my system into while troubleshooting my main Skylake problem system (black screen hangs narrowed down to motherboard as the likely culprit). So in trying to avoid a problem, I experienced more difficulties.

The only thing I didn't like about it was having only 3 fan headers, but that's common among ITX systems. I needed 4 headers so I bought a splitter. The cooling is a bit of a tight squeeze but fits too - I have a Noctua U9 series and the mounting bracket sits about 1mm above the VRM, while the fan is about 1mm from the heatspreader-covered ram (standard mounting, pointing towards the case rear blowing through the heatsink).
 
I built a system using this board last week and I'm writing this comment on it right now. It's still early, but I like it so far. I got it because it was one of 2 mini-ITX boards that had both USB 3.1(A&C), and an M.2 slot. And it had about double the USB 3.0 ports that the competing Gigabyte board had.

I notice you were using the P1.2 BIOS. When I built this, the current BIOS was 1.5 and one of the major parts of the updates was memory compatibility. I wonder if you'd have any better luck with your memory issues with a newer BIOS. I'm using Ripajaws V @ 2800MHz with a locked i7 6700. It took some fiddling to get it to boot with both sticks in, but eventually it worked with the default XMP profile.
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I've had the board for almost two months now, and have almost no complaints. Like you, I'm using the locked i7 6700, and I had issues initially getting the RAM OC settings down, but once everything was stable, it worked great.... as long as I don't mess with the settings anymore.

Couple of issues though... I really wanted to use the Ultra Fast boot (the setting that skips the bios completely), to try and get system boot to sub 3 seconds (it's about 6-7 seconds now to desktop), but when that setting is enabled, anytime I attempt to go back to bios using the ASRock "reset to bios" tool, I can't boot properly again without resetting all my bios settings. Same problem experienced when using the windows "reset to bios" setting as well.

Additionally, the little piece of bent metal that the Bluetooth and WiFi antenna connectors are attached to is useless. Mine is partially broken (one of the connectors is no longer locked in place and spins unabated), and the metal is not bent correctly in place. It is slightly shifted to one side, but that's more of a minor annoyance I guess.

Also +1 on the fan headers comment, also had to get a splitter.
 
HEY GIGABYTE, your Z170N Gaming 5 is required. Please step out of the shadows and join us.


You're correct, the standard for Mini ITX is two, and better-feature boards usually have three.
 
I love the idea on Mini ITX after years of full towers crowding my office space but the lack of SLI is an issue I cannot put to one side as I rely on SLI to power my 4K setup.
 
HEY GIGABYTE, your Z170N Gaming 5 is required. Please step out of the shadows and join us.


You're correct, the standard for Mini ITX is two, and better-feature boards usually have three.
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I agree I was looking for a review compared to Gigabyte Z170N Gaming 5 too. But specs wise it seem the the Asrock has more feature and customization. But gosh there's something that looks good about the Gigabyte board.

Also I guess we'll have to wait until the Asus ROG maximum IX to come out as the VIII didn't come out swing like we thought it would
 
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