The case, for reference, is a Raidmax Hyperion, which is a terrific little case, but this isn't a review on the case.  Here's what you came for:

It's outfitted with a 650w modular PSU, a Sapphire R9-380 4GB card, 8GB of Avexir Core Series DDR3, and a Zalman CNPS 8900 Quiet CPU cooler.

Here it is paired with the Asus MX279H 27" monitor.

In any event, beautiful pictures aside, I've had an overall positive experience building with this board.  I should note that I didn't choose this board because it was an Asrock board, nor did I try to avoid it, it simply was the only choice for a 970 chipset that would run an FX-8350.  To that end, I don't have any pro or anti Asrock agenda and can provide an honest, unbiased opinion of the product.

Since this was the only board, I looked at the additional bells and whistles that I was getting along with the board, because, like it or not, this was what I was buying, so I hoped I'd at least find some useful tools.  The price was certainly right, I just hoped I wasn't sacrificing higher end features, or worse, overall quality.

    

Well, it seems to have high quality audio, decent overclocking utilities, some useful software (like the Asrock rapid charge driver), a good complement of USB ports for a mATX board, a heatsinked VRM, about as many fan headers as I can hope to find on a board this size, a full 4 RAM slots, lots of SATA connectors......

So I ordered it.

The day after I ordered it I decided I would research it a bit more and discovered the requirement of the top down blower design, and after researching that further, I decided that I'd order the Zalman cooler noted above, I was angling for the widest blower I could find that would overhang the VRM and everything else near it without running into my ram.  As you can see in this picture, here's the result after mounting it.

Full system shot, at my workstation for software installation- I hadn't replaced the rear fan yet, so it's

not lit up as pretty.

Different angle, to see the full profile

The Zalman cooler basically covers nearly everything, including ram slot #4, but that's ok, as I wasn't planning on using it anyway.  

A few days later, the parts arrived.  I found the board to be well packaged, with good documentation, with the board itself being a solid and attractive black color to match nearly any system.  It's a sturdy board too, it didn't feel flimsy like some boards I've handled.

Anyway, after receiving and installing the board, the system fired up fine on the first boot, but I noticed the CPU was getting a little warm for my liking under load.  I found that the board had overvolted the CPU just a little bit and I backed off the voltage, stabilizing the temps.  I played around with the overclocking utilities a bit and eventually managed to wind up with a slight overclock (4.3 ghz), but I hadn't anticipated on being able to overclock an 8350 very much in a small case anyway.  To that end however, the system is very quiet, which is particularly valuable when it's sitting on top of the desk next to the user. 

I had some minor concerns about Windows 10 compatibility, since Windows 10 had just released, but these fears proved unfounded.  The only issue I ran across was AMD's Cool and Quiet needing to be disabled; it was creating some noticeable performance hangs.

Overall, the performance of the board has met my expectations, and the bonuses make me feel like I got a great deal of bang for my buck.  There are a few caveats however:

1)  The USB 3 header is in a really, really weird place.  I'm going to have to buy a USB header extension cable to make it from the front of the case to the header, and it will likely make the interior much less pretty.  :(  A bit odd considering I really had no complaints about the rest of the layout, as you can see it made for very clean connections and cable management.

2)  I wish the VRM was larger.  I realize it's a small board, so this may not have been technically possible, but I'm kind of surprised that the thing can run an 8350, and it makes sense why a top down blower would be basically required to run this CPU.  

These are really my only two faults with the board at this time, it's been a great purchase and I'm excited to see what a full size board from Asrock with a full VRM is capable of in my next system build when I upgrade mine, I have a feeling my the only complaints I had would not be present on a larger board, and it's honestly quite impressive how much juice and data is flying through a board this size and still posting good temps (I don't break 40c board temp or 70c CPU under load), so overall, an impressive feat of engineering to cram everything onto this little board and still support the 8350.  

There's a giant 200mm intake fan mounted to the front; it actually is mounted on the exterior of the case behind the front bezel that provides intake; it gets its air draw from the bottom.  It was a really tight fit, but it also creates to blue glow footprint and puts a little more light towards the front of the case.  The top two exhaust fans are actually white LEDs that came stock with the case and they mix well with the blue LED lighting from the fans/RAM.  The system looks spectacular in the dark, I don't know why I didn't take any lights out pictures.