Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsSo far, so bad!
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2016
The motherboard was shipped in its original box, without any cover. The box was not sealed or taped in any way, but it appears all the content is there. The board itself was also in an unsealed bag, I hope it is new and there are no surprises upon install.
That did not happen, I can't even install the INF-drivers or any other drivers for this board. The install will start, hang up and will not finish overnight.
I Contacted ASRock via email and will post updates if a solution is given in time, or return the board.
Update_1: Contacted ASRock also via the UEFI internal app, so far no reply.
Update_2: Got several email exchanges with ASRock ending in the suggestion to Install windows 10 anew on a blank drive to be able to finally load the MB drivers. This worked in the end but required a complete reinstall of all applications, emails and data. The board was semi working after that.
One of the reasons I choose this board, was to be able to set up any 2 drives (not including C:) in a Raid_1 arrangement for data security. After I had been able to finally load the drivers and got the computer back into a useful condition, I tried to create that Raid setup with between the G: and F: drive, this worked as far as a "Volume1" Raid volume was created.
After reboot the C: drive wasn't found anymore! Going back into BIOS and making sure the correct boot-drive was selected was of no avail. So I decided to remove the Raid value assignment, this required reformatting the 2 drives involved and thereby loosing all data,
Now the system will see the C: drive again and boot normally.
I decided to keep this board only for the fact that I did not want to go through another 3 days of data and applications off-and reloading.
To be fair, I don't know if the problems are inherent to the Z170 chipset or caused by the ASRock hardware or software implementation.
