Asrock 990FX Extreme9 Review

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   ASRock 990FX Extreme9 ReviewHere's link to a video that I posted as well for this board. Check it out and continue reading for some extra details!

While everyone and their brother likes to talk about the upcoming Zen CPUs around the corner, there are still plenty of computer enthusiasts who have a trusty FX CPU sitting in their main system. Sure, the FX series a bit behind when it comes to some of its rivals, but it's a great processor that many consumers haven't seen the need to upgrade from for quite some time. I happen to be one of those consumers and while I'm getting pretty close to wanting an upgrade next year, here's the review on not only why I went with an AMD CPU, but why I chose an ASRock board as well.

First, let's talk about the FX-8350. I purchased my first one in 2012 when it first came out. Even though most gaming performance favored other chips, it was really hard to find a solid performer that could also give the end user lot's of overclocking options. The beauty about going with an AM3+ chip was having some extremely reasonable options for 990FX Chipset overclocking motherboards. My first board was an Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z. It seemed like I had the perfect combo.

Turmoil came, however, when I started realizing that my Cooler Master Seidon 120m didn't quite having the cooling power I wanted. I started looking into other coolers to get more overclocking headroom. I'd install a new cooler, then begin having continuous blue screen errors followed by multiple RMAs. The best I could tell was the socket couldn't handle the stress of multiple CPU cooler installs causing a channel to break. The problem  was I wanted to keep experimenting with several different cooling solutions.
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After a few times of this, I began looking into a new motherboard. Looking at reviews and researching, I decided to give the Extreme9 a try. It seemed like a capable motherboard and i hoped I wouldn't have too many issues. For starters, I did like the color scheme much better. I'm not a huge fan of red, but red and black is on everything. The black and gold worked out great for the blue and purple color schemes of my computers.
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The socket on this board was much roomier than my previous Asus. I found that my cooler pump heads had no trouble fitting between the ram and heatsinks. I also began to realize that this board took the abuse of multiple installs without a sweat. I'd swap out coolers, do reviews, even pop a cooler off and slap it back on just to make sure my thermal paste seal was perfect. All in all, the board handled everything excellently. My first problem came from a bracket that grounded out the temp sensor. The board kept running fine, but I couldn't monitor the Socket/VRM temp anymore. ASRock support RMAed the board in spite of me telling them this without charging me. I was hugely impressed!
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The layout on the bottom is pretty standard. You have room for Crossfire/SLI setups which was pretty important to me. I really like the slider clip method of holding the VGA in rather than a push down clip. There were also plenty of sata ports which was good since I wanted to run a RAID 0 with a DVD drive. I never really needed the power and reset buttons built in, but it's nice to have them there nonetheless.

If there is one weak part to the Extreme9, it was the BIOS. However, this would only be a real concern if you're the type of user who needs lots of advanced features. As it stands, the BIOS may be simple, but it has everything you need to do some serious overclocking, without too many setting that begin getting confusing. After having owned the board for a couple years, I've grown to really like the BIOS set up and can easily set things up to work well for my system.
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There was only one major complaint I had with this board and from what I've seen, it's not even an issue with the newer boards ASRock puts out. But I was not a "fan" of the fan control. Rather than using a more traditional fan curve, the BIOS requires you to set a target temperature, then uses a level setting to determine how hard the fan blow. While it works well for targeting a temperature, you can't control the gradual rise of RPMs hardly at all. Once again, not my favorite set up but since the board worked so well in other areas, I found this to be something that was easily forgotten about.
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So there you have it. I pretty short review, but a good insight into why I personally am a huge fan of ASRock and AMD. The FX-8350 has been an extremely fun chip to tweak, and the ASRock board has not only performed well for me, but has been very durable as well. Even in the overclocking department, the ASRock board is never the limiting factor, but my own cooling solutions at the time. Personally, I can always recommend ASRock to other users and I'm personally glad I picked one up as well.