Lastly, real-world test results, which for us, consists of gaming. We have excluded the Batman Arkham Origins test from here because we ran our standard Low-Quality test for memory, CPU and motherboard reviews.
Running gaming benchmarks at Ultra/Max game settings will introduce the graphics card to the mix, but we are looking for an overall system performance with the gaming tests and for any bottlenecks or bandwidth issues that may not surface with pure FPS runs.
Conclusion
We bought the ASRock Z270 Pro4 for a project before the Z370 CPU upgrade fiasco happened. It’s working as planned and it’s got a 7700K installed and the owner is very happy. We persevered with the review because it’s a good motherboard, and the only element that makes it last generation is the CPU. It’s a modern Z270 chipset motherboard with a couple of throwbacks to yesteryears, such as the PCI slot, and a VGA graphics port.
Some users will welcome these old technologies, they may well plug a gap in someone’s budget will they save for a newer CPU supporting motherboard, or they may have some legacy TV card or technology that needs PCI to interface with it. Either way, it’s a good buy even if you ignore the old tech and lack of SLI support.
Intel has made their own chipset obsolete by ring-fencing the 8th Generation Intel Core i7 processors to the Z3xx chipsets and in turn orphaned motherboards like the ASRock Z270 Pro4 from the upgrade path. The ASRock Z270 Pro4 motherboard is a solid performer, just out of luck.
ASRock Z270 Pro4 Motherboard
ASRock Z270 Pro4 Motherboard Review
Package - 7
Performance - 8
Price - 7.5
Consumer Experience - 8
7.6
We bought the ASRock Z270 Pro4 for a project before the Z370 CPU upgrade fiasco happened. It's working as planned and it's got a 7700K installed and the owner is very happy. We persevered with the review because it's a good motherboard, and the only element that makes it last generation is the CPU. It's a modern Z270 chipset motherboard with a couple of throwbacks to yesteryears, such as the PCI slot, and a VGA graphics port.