It has been quite some time since the Intel X299 HEDT platform was launched upon the masses. At first, there was a bit of furor about the platform, what it offered, the weirdness of having two separate CPU designs fit within the same socket; ideas of under-powered VRM designs and extreme cooling needs... yet what I see here on the market for this platform today presents itself in a completely different light. However, there was a huge gaping hole in these updated board designs, and that was an entry-level board for this platform that had the capabilities to not only push CPUs like the 10-core i9-7900X, but also the HCC (High Core Count) CPUs, like the 7960X and 7980XE. With the ASRock X299 Extreme4, that hole has been filled.

There are some caveats to this board; the PCIe connectivity is a bit limited, slot-wise. However, for an entry-level board, I do not see that as a problem; there are other board options to meet those needs. All the basic features a mainstream user might want are here for sure, so that slot configuration basically matches what other mainstream boards equipped with Z370 or Z270 chipsets offer; just plain old makes sense. That is what this board is about; offering the mainstream experience for HEDT CPUs, and at that, the ASRock X299 Extreme4 definitely fits the bill.

There is little here I would change. The fan headers are not in an ideal location. Wi-Fi is not present, and it should be (although this board is ready for you to add an M.2-based Wi-Fi card to a slot for that exact purpose, with a bracket for the antennas found inside the box). BIOS settings, once you start overclocking, do need manual tuning, and there are no "quick-fix" overclcoking profiles to automagically overclock your CPU and memory. Yet while these might seem like important things to me personally, I do not think that true entry-level users will need all this stuff, and the BIOS things could easily be fixed with a BIOS update. That means the physical characteristics are and should be the primary focus, and in that, what I see here is solid and ready for punishment, and that alone is something that should not be overlooked. This isn't your typical entry-level motherboard with a limited BIOS; this is an entry-level board for a true enthusiast who is going to overclock and wants plenty of Intel CPU cores. With a US$200 price point, ASRock has done this right, better than anyone else I have seen. I challenge other board makers to send me something that matches or bests this board for the same price!