ASRock Z390 Extreme4

SCORE PRICE £133 (£160 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/298asrock

The ASRock Extreme4 squares up to the Gigabyte Aorus with a strong set of features and a slightly lower price. And it starts off well, thanks to its PCI configuration. Two of the three PCIe x16 slots run at 8x speed and the board supports AMD CrossFire and Nvidia SLI – so multi-GPU rigs are possible.

There’s good connectivity throughout. More details are in the “Key specs” below, but note the two M.2 slots for NVMe storage and a third for wireless cards. You also get eight SATA ports – two more than any other board here. The Realtek ALC1220 audio chipset is more ordinary, lacking features such as 8-channel audio, while the Gigabit Ethernet uses an entry-level chipset, too.

Don’t expect eye-catching design: RGB LEDs decorate the southbridge side, but there aren’t many compared to the Gigabyte. The heatsinks are smart, but not grandiose, and the MSI and Aorus boards both have more onboard lighting headers.

Performance levels are fine but not outstanding. In our image-editing test, its result of 170 is on par with most other boards, and its video-editing score of 248 is a little behind the Gigabyte. Its overall score of 254 is better than the Asus and level with the MSI, but behind the Gigabyte.

Further benchmarks illustrated that the ASRock was better when handling tougher productivity tasks. Its single-threaded Geekbench score was mediocre, for instance, but its multicore result of 28,861 was ahead of the Asus and MSI boards and barely behind the Gigabyte. Its Cinebench score of 1,486 saw the ASRock occupy a similar berth. Its storage speeds aren’t bad, and its memory bandwidth figures are the best in the group.

The ASRock is less adept in games. Its Shadow of the Tomb Raider average of 99fps is the worst here, while its 3D Mark Fire Strike score of 17,650 was behind the Gigabyte and MSI boards. It’s also not frugal, with the worst power consumption figures.

The ASRock pairs decent application performance with good storage options, plenty of PCI connectivity and a good rear I/O. But the Gigabyte still has superior features and quicker performance.

KEY SPECS 4 x 4,300MHz DDR4, max 64GB 3 x PCIe x16, 3 x PCIe x1 5 x USB 3.1, USB-C 3.1, PS/2, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, D-SUB, optical S/PDIF, 5 x audio 2 x M.2, 8 x SATA 3 3yr RTB warranty