The Board - Layout

The ASRock Z87E-ITX features a crammed layout for Intel's Z87 platform yet is still seemingly stuffed with features—the board's surface is a big, busy mix of parts here, there, and everywhere. Flipping the board over and looking at its back reveals the PCB's brown color, something quite a few enthusiasts dislike a fair bit.


As is to be expected of such a small board, the area around the socket is full. The socket itself is really close to the board's upper edge, which frees up a bit more space than there might have been otherwise. The rear of the socket is just as cramped, with a few surface-mounted ICs to either side of the socket's backplate, but aftermarket coolers should for the most part squeak into the provided space without much issue.


The ASRock Z87E-ITX only features one PCIe x16 slot. The DIMM slots boast capabilities reaching 2933 MHz and then some, and each slot can handle DIMMs of up to 8 GB in density, bringing total memory support for the ASRock Z87E-ITX up to 16 GB. There's also an included mSATA slot on the back of the board, shown in the third picture above.


The ASRock Z87E-ITX has its pin headers in various locations, as is common to the mITX platform in general. USB 3.0 and front-panel plugs are on the board's right edge, while audio and USB 2.0 headers are by the board's I/O towers. There are only two fan headers on the ASRock Z87E-ITX, one three-pin and one 4-pin PWM header.


The ASRock Z87E-ITX's backplate has quite a few video outputs, including HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort. There is a LAN port and the usual USB and audio ports, and a CLEAR CMOS switch in a handy location. There are six SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the ASRock Z87E-ITX, all of which are powered by the Intel Z87 chipset.