ASRockMini ITX DDR4 Motherboards FATAL1TY Z170 Gaming-ITX/AC

This is the second FATAL1TY motherboard I've had. The previous one was an ATX that was supposed to be an interim replacement for an RMA on a Asus board (much more pleased with the ASRock motherboard than the Asus). After the first one winning me over I decided to return to the ASRock FATAL1TY and have been very happy. The base electronic components on these boards are made to be durable for a machine that is used for heavy game play. I don't overclock because that seems to be less stable, which this board is very stable. It's very smart on how it handles power onto the board and its components. Very happy, again, with this ASRock offering. It has a few features I didn't even expect from a mother board too, like onboard wifi and bluetooth.

Update: 09/03/2016: Still love these boards. While experimenting with adding a graphics card, I neglected to switch to a higher power Pico PSU, leading to a borderline under power situation. This led to poor card performance and display errors on the 2 onboard HDMI display ports.(Specifically, when coming out of Sleep mode, I got only a solid single color or snowy screen) Eventually resolved this by backing down the BIOS (didn't think it would let me at first) to v1.50. Must keep it there as the issue returns if I upgrade. Asrock tech support was responsive and actually issued a BIOS update, but it was not a total success for me.Also, note the higher percentage of 1 star ratings. I believe that Asrock occasionally has quality control issues with some production runs of this board,so buying from Amazon is a good idea in case you get a bad board that must be returned. Amazon had a good sale price, so I jumped on it. The board was DOA. Did lots of troubleshooting. Also suspected I inadvertently got a previously returned bad board as the box and MB serial numbers did not match. Reported this to Amazon. Humm, Amazon has another good sale price. I'm tempted. Attached is a pic of one of my builds.Update: 07/31/16a: I now have 3 of these great boards and searching for good prices on a 4th.Just completed 2 low profile Mini ITX HTPC builds/rebuilds with these boards and new I3 Skylake chips. Got the I3's here at Amazon, but the boards' sale price at another store was too good to pass up. Now and 3 years ago I used the best available Asrock ITX boards to enhance what I want in these builds: feature rich power HTPC's that can run nearly silently with ultra low profile CPU fans without burning up. With the previous builds I used the motherboard's built in controls to slightly underclock 65 Watt I5 and I7 CPU's to get the thermal and quiet noise level patterns I wanted. Now I have used 2 new Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac boards with thirteen buck Rosewill RCX-Z775-LP 80mm Sleeve Low Profile CPU Coolers that without underclocking the CPU's run quietly 10-15 Celsius lower than the old builds. Plus I now have HTPC's that have HDMI 2.0 ports that can run 4K video at 60Hz.I am not a gamer, so I also bought the Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac boards to get the new USB3.1 and C ports and upgraded HD Audio. I suspect that gamers on a budget could put the cash saved on a Skylake I3 into a good Graphics board and small SSD - and still have a rocking machine.Update: 11/11/15: Windows 10 was alerting me to momentary video driver failures. Driver updates, rollbacks and other settings changes did not help, but updating the motherboards to the latest BIOS seems to have resolved the problem. Asrock makes it easy to do this.Update: 07/31/16b: This board even let me easily roll back to an earlier BIOS (1.50) from the latest BIOS to help me resolve single solid color or "snow" video screens when coming out of sleep mode. Did this to myself by failing to first check if I had my most powerful pico DC/DC PSU in my board to handle the load before experimenting with adding then removing a fanless midrange graphics card. Thought I had damaged the electronics in the CPU and/or Asrock. Hours of troubleshooting involving changing drivers/settings and switching out CPUs/Mobos failed until I noticed that the problem developed in the board with the newer BIOS update (2.10) Rollback solved the problem. Notified Asrock tech support.

Update 10/26: After using the motherboard for a week and installing a fresh copy of Win 7 x64 Pro, I found the computer restarting randomly at times for no apparent reason: no blue screen, nothing, just as if I hit the restart button on my case. I tried updating the mobo's UEFI but that didn't make any difference. So I tested each component one by one: Swapped out the OS drive to two different drives (a HDD and then SSD), tested all of my hard drives, tested the memory, did several 2-4 hour CPU burn test, then did a similar GPU burn test (I'm using integrated graphics), and even a simultaneous CPU + GPU burn test just for kicks. All came back fine, but the computer kept rebooting about once a day or so. After eliminating everything except the mobo and power supply, I decided to order the same mobo again from Amazon. Fortunately my case made it pretty easy to swap out the mobo. I rebooted Windows a few times so Windows would recognize the new board. I then left it on for 105 straight hours with, burn tests, downloads, streaming movies from online, and playing home videos continuously, and I haven't seen a single glitch. In conclusion, I'm pretty confident the first mobo was faulty and was causing the random restarts. I should also note that the second board I got had the wireless back panel bent. Although it was easy to bend back into place, I'm hoping there's nothing else wrong with it and it won't die on me in a couple months.Update 10/13: I have changed my rating from 1 to 4 stars now. It turns out that unlike any other motherboard I've used in the past, this one doesn't even turn on unless there is a CPU seated in the socket! The back story is, Amazon accidentally shipped me the wrong CPU that wasn't LGA1151, so there was no way I could properly test the board until Amazon sent the correct CPU. Now that the board works and all the software has been reinstalled, the board performs great. The driver installation was very straightforward, just click all the drivers you want to install, or click "install all", but I chose to install just the drivers I wanted (mainly because I didn't want to install the antivirus option it had). I also want to note that for whatever reason, the Intel graphics driver and HD audio driver on the provided DVD didn't work for me, on both Win 7 x64 and x86. No problem though, you can download them online which worked for me. Other than that the board was great. I tried the integrated wireless which worked, but gave me lower link speeds than my external USB 3 TP-Link wireless NIC (525 mbps on the integrated chip, 867 mbps on my TP-Link NIC). At least I have a second wireless NIC in case I ever needed it though. As for the memory I am using G.Skill 2x4GB DDR4 memory at 2400 MHz. When I loaded up the BIOS it automatically set it to the correct speed which was very convenient. Another great feature is there are 6 SATA ports for all the drives I have attached to this board. Overall I'm happy with the board so far, and I will update if anything else changes.Original Review-----------------------Pros:I am building a new home theater PC (HTPC) machine that would be capable of playing 4K content in the future. Since this isn't my main computer and I didn't want to shell out a couple hundred for a video card with HDMI 2.0/2.0a specifications, I was looking for a mobo with HDMI 2.0. For the processor I selected the Intel Skylake Pentium G4500 CPU, which can supposedly handle 2160/60p decoding. This mobo had all the right specs on paper: HDMI 2.0, 2X USB 3.1 (10 Gbits/sec) ports, and plenty of USB 3.0 ports. It also has an integrated wifi which is very convenient (though, I never tested it, see cons). Additionally I can also drive two 4K displays in the future if I wanted to, by using the additional DisplayPort 1.2 port. Also this mobo has 6 SATA ports, which is very useful if one has a lot of hard drives they want to hook up.Cons:Completely dead on arrival. I checked all the reviews here and on Newegg and definitely noticed a higher fraction of customers reporting DOAs or some other non-user error. I'm usually pretty lucky with my electronics working when I receive them, but this wasn't that case. I tried unplugging everything and resetting the CMOS like they suggest on the 1 egg reviews here, but that made no difference. My new case came with a basic mobo (4-pin) speaker that I plugged in, and the computer wouldn't even turn on let alone make any sounds. I also tried using my old working case and PSU but it still refuses to turn on.I was really hoping I could get my HTPC up and working tonight but the mobo stopped the show. I ordered a replacement board so we will see how that goes. I will update once I try the new board.Other Thoughts:This is actually my 2nd ASRock mobo, my first one is still running (Z77 chipset!) since 2012 July which is pretty good.

The only two minuses prevent this from being 5 stars:- using the M.2 slot with a SATA drive disables both of the SATA Express' SATA ports. Other competing brands would just disable one, or none at all.- the Wifi antenna broke down fast (wire dislodged), and attaches to the case via double-sided tape. Not the best method, IMHO.Other than those two niggling points, it's been stellar. The UEFI BIOS is pretty robust, once you get around and understand its intricacies. You can even set your fan curve from there. So far, I'm getting a pretty stable overclock at 4.6GHz.

The motherboard itself is excellent. Be sure to download ALL drivers after loading up your OS - you will get significantly better performance and boot times. Please disregard the reviews commenting on seller issues instead of product issues. Also, if you're considering buying this now, look into Z270 instead. There is a Z270 version of this exact board coming soon with slightly better specs.