The Extreme6 P67 board from ASRock is another well built board from their line-up with enhanced connectivity and a solid VRM implementation. Thanks to the new VRM, I was able to overclock to 4.8GHz without issues again, but it was impressive that I could reach stable status with a smaller VCore voltage, 1.255 (vs 1.265V on the Extreme4). Thanks to the lower voltage, in Prime95 the CPU has stabilized at 66 degrees Celsius (vs 68 on the Extreme4 board).

The latest UEFI beta that I have used is also equipped with the screenshot feature (F12 key), which I have used during testing to take snapshots for the UEFI section of the review. I haven't experienced any crashes during testing in the UEFI interface, but for extreme overclockers, in the GUI we also have the Boot Failure Guard option in case of trouble (system does not boot). The board is also equipped with a CMOS Reset button in the back, as a secondary system reset option. It is also necessary to mention that after an UEFI update, the saved profiles will be automatically erased, to avoid incompatibilities between the old and new UEFI versions.

The mouse cursor movement issues persisted in this UEFI version too, so I had mostly used the keyboard for navigating inside the interface, which is as easy as using an older BIOS.

The board preserves the same spacing between the PCI-Express x16 slots as the Extreme4, to permit cards with large cooling systems, in Crossfire/SLI configurations, to fit. Also, like the Extreme4, the Extreme6 is shipped with an USB 3.0 Front Panel (which also has the possibility to house a 2.5'' HDD or SSD), that can plugged right into a dedicated USB 3.0 header on the board.

In the productivity benchmarks performed, the Extreme6 there was very little ahead of the Extreme4, a good thing considering that the rest of the test bench components remained the same. Price wise, the Extreme6 can be found in shops for about 155 Euros, a little more expensive than its less equipped variant, the Extreme4.

Update: Seems ASRock is now offering BETA UEFI releases to the general public, the latest available for the Extreme6 being available here.

ASRock P67 Extreme6 Motherboard Recommended For:

I would like to thank ASRock again for offering me one of their latest products for review!

-- This review and tests were done before the latest developments regarding the SATA degradation bug; if you can live with only 6 SATA devices (2 SATA3 P67 + 4 SATA3 on Marvell) and/or don't mind using a PCIe SATA card; Sandy Bridge platform will still deliver the fastest computing experience on the planet!

Update

After using HDTune to test HDD Health on all different ports as suggested here, to find out if any of the ports are already degrading, you can find the results in the thumbs below:

As you can see, no errors noticable (yet). If your S1155 PC starts acting up, run HDTune health check to see if maybe SATA ports are the cause of your issues.