The Taiwanese motherboard maker ASRock has announced one more motherboard, designed for use with Intel’s latest Skylake processors. The board is called Z170A-X1/3.1 and as you can see from the name, it comes with the high-end Z170 chipset and support for USB 3.1.
The new board features the common ATX form factor but comes with somewhat unusual dimensions – it measures 30 x 20 cm (L x W) but these dimensions will make it easy to install in many PC cases. The Z170A-X1/3.1 features a 5-phase power supply system for the installed processor (this makes us think that after all the Z170A-X1/3.1 is not an overclocking board), four DDR4 memory slots that can accept modules running from 2133 MHz to 3466 MHz, one PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot, another PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot that runs at x4 speed, three PCI-E 3.0 x1 slots, six SATA 3.0 ports, an Intel I219V Gigabit Ethernet controller, Realtek ALC892 audio, two USB 2.0 headers and a single USB 3.0 header. In the back users will also find two PS/2 ports for mice and keyboards, a DVI-D port, six USB 3.0 connectors, one RJ-45 port, USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C ports and three audio connectors.
The new ASRock motherboard uses only high-quality components including ones made by using the so-called Super Alloy technology and features full spike protection, premium 50A power choke, high density glass fabric PCB and more.
The Z170A-X1/3.1 is not the best Skylake motherboard out there but the new ASRock product will sell for just around USD 100, which will make this board one of the cheapest Z170 boards to feature support for LGA 1151 processors as well as USB 3.1. Given the price and the tech specs that the Z170A-X1/3.1 offers, the new board might become a hit on the market in the near future.
Source: ASRock