ASRock Z170 OC Formula Motherboard Review

By Steven Kean September 28, 2015

Storage Media Performance

M.2

Testing the M.2 interface, we installed a second Kingston Predator M.2 PCIe G2x4 240GB drive into the second M.2 slot, M2_2. Kingston rates this Predator SSD for 1400MB/s read and 600MB/s write with ATTO 2.41a. Let’s take a look at CrystalDiskMark and see how it rates the performance of the Kingston Predator M.2 SSD.

Legit Bottom Line: The ASRock Z170 OC Formula has a faster Sequential Read speed on the M.2 interface, however the Sequential Write speed is a bit slower.

SATA 6Gb/s

Connecting the SanDisk Ultra II SSD to a SATA 6Gb/s connection, we continued to use CrystalDiskMark to test it’s performance.

Legit Bottom Line: The ASRock Z170 OC Formula received the highest score for this test. The Read speed was 2MB/s faster than the other Z170 motherboard, while the sequential Write was pretty close to 7MB/s.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0

To test SuperSpeed USB 3.0, we will connect a Thermaltake 5G USB dock and a Sandisk Ultra II 480GB SSD directly to the motherboards USB 3.0 ports on the back I/O cluster.

Legit Bottom Line: On the USB 3.0 connection, the Z170 OC Formula had a slower Sequential Read speed by around 24MB/s. However, the Sequential Write speed was around 44MB/s faster on the ASRock Z170 OC Formula.

USB Type-C

USB 3.1 is the newest USB revision, and unfortunately, nothing takes advantage of the increased bandwidth. So there is little point in testing this latest USB innovation at this time. However, Kingston provided us one of their MicroDuo 3C flash drives, that utilizes the Type-C connector, so we will do a quick test using that connector. Kingston rates this drive for 100MB/s Read and 15MB/s Write.

Legit Bottom Line: While the Z170 OC Formula had a bit faster Sequential Read speed, the Sequential Write speed was a bit slower. Regardless, it was still faster than the official rated speed.