Layout

At a first glance the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer looks very good with its harmonic design. The PCB as well as a few expansion slot are kept in black and two memory slots, the PCI-Expres Gen 3.0 x16 slots and the heatsinks are red. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. ASRock decided to go for straight SATA connectors. In order to avoid compatibility issues with powerful and large graphics cards the maker placed them at the bottom edge of the motherboard.



The ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer received eight digital power phases regardin the CPU. Furthermore ASRock equips this board with their so called "Super Alloy 9 chokes". Like the name indicates the new chokes are made from an alloy, which helps reducing operating temperature. Also ripple as well as DCR are lower than with the chokes used on previous generation motherobards. Apart from that, saturation saturation current is higher (38A instead of 20A). The memory gets a stable current supply from two individual phases. The VRM design on this motherboard is overall quite strong and another reason for that is the use of the latest NexFet MOSFETs.



Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer. Officially supported are DDR3 3000(O.C.) / 2933(O.C.) / 2800(O.C.) / 2666(O.C.) / 2600(O.C.) / 2500(O.C.) / 2400(O.C.) / 2200(O.C.) / 2133(O.C.) / 2000(O.C.) / 1866(O.C.) / 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 1.3.



On the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer the southbridge is being cooled by a passive cooling block. A closer look at the VRM area shows that there is an additional heatsinks. All heatsinks are milled from a solid piece of aluminium and the cooling they provide to the onboard components is sufficient to keep everything at reasonable temperatures.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Bioshock: Infinite
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 7	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1