Today, ASRock adds another Z77 motherboard to its arsenal, the Z77 Extreme11. As described by their press release, this thing is beastlike. The motherboard has 8 SAS2/SATA3 connectors via an LSI SAS2308 PCIe 3.0 x8 controller, support for 3-way SLI and 4-way CrossFireX with the help of a PLX PEX 8747 bridge and up to 12 USB 3.0 ports (8 on the back panel I/O and 4 via internal headers and the 3.5″ included bay device). But, the features do not end there. The Z77 Extreme11 supports LAN teaming with dual Intel LAN chips. It has a 2T2R Dual Band WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 module bundled with a Wi-SB Box which supports dual band 2.4/5GHz spectrums and WiFi a/b/g/n.
Build quality includes a 2oz copper PCB, 8 + 4 power phase design, premium gold caps and dual-stack MOSFETs. Bundled software includes what ASRock is calling “Fast Boot” technology. Claims estimate booting into Windows 8 takes no longer than 1.5 seconds. There was no indication whether this is a cold boot or boot from sleep/hibernation. We will work on getting clarification from ASRock. If you need to get back into the UEFI, there is the ability to enable “Restart To UEFI” once logged on to Windows.
There is no word on pricing or availability yet.
UPDATE: We have confirmed with ASRock that the 1.5 second boot time is from a cold boot start. Impressive, most impressive.
