Drivers for ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 Mother Board... Which ones?

[bpatters69]

I have installed all of the components for my new ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 Mother Board which include:

SSD Hard Drive which is the boot HD
Two mechanical drives (Only one installed so far. Not using RAID)
Opitcal Drive
8GB RAM

So far so good. I was able to get Windows 7 64bit Home, SP1 installed but I have not activated the OS yet. I have taken a look at the drivers page and I want to make sure I am installing the correct drivers. I have installed some of drivers but not all of them.

Here is a list of the drivers on the ASROCK page located here.

I am listing the drivers in order as you see them on the page.

Driver	Installed?	Note
Realtek high definition audio driver ver:7004	Yes	Needed for the Sound Card
INF driver ver:10.0.21	Yes	Needed for Chipset
Intel Management Engine driver ver:10.0.31.1000_1.5M	No	Should I install this driver and the one below?
Intel Management Engine driver ver:10.0.31.1000_5M	No	See note above. Install this one and the one above?
Intel Rapid Start driver ver:4.0.0.1068	No	I think I tried to install this driver but I got an error. Need a Windows file before I can install this driver.
Intel Smart Connect driver ver:5.0.10.2907	No	Do I need this?
Realtek Lan driver ver:7086	Yes	Needed for Realtek LAN card.
Lan driver ver:19.0.27.0	Yes	Figured it was related to LAN so I installed it.
AppCharger ver:1.0.6	No	Do I need it?
SATA Floppy Image ver:13.1.0.1058	No	Do I need it?
ASMedia SATA3 Driver ver:2.0.8.0	Yes	Needed for SATA
Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver and utility	No	I need Microsoft .Net framework. Maybe this loads when I activate and update my OS?
ASMedia USB 3.0 driver ver:1.16.15.0	Yes	Needed for USB
Intel USB 3.0 driver ver:3.0.1.41	Yes	Needed for USB
VGA driver ver:15.33.31.64.3993	No	I have a dedicated graphics card and I have not installed it yet. I thought it makes more sense to install the software with the card vs a Generic VGA driver. Agree?

There are also a bunch of utilties which look to be programs which appear to be optional. I want to install what is needed but I do not want to install anything that is un-necesary.

Thanks, Bill

[SandsOfTime]

Re: Drivers for ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 Mother Board... Which ones?

First, you can update your OS without activation. So you get the needed .NET Software.

You need the Intel Management driver 10.0.31.1000_1.5M, because you have a Z97 chip set.
Intel Rapid Start driver / Intel Smart Connect driver: only needed if this functions are enabled in UEFI.
AppCharger delivers more power to USB ports to charge mobile devices faster, so it depends on if you need this.
SATA Floppy Image: NO.
Intel Rapid Storage is the Intel SATA driver for AHCI and RAID, so YES.
VGA driver: YES or NO, if you only want the dedicated graphics card, then disable the internal graphics chip in UEFI and don't install the driver.

The only optional utility that makes sense (IMHO) is A-Tuning.

[bpatters69]

Re: Drivers for ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 Mother Board... Which ones?

First, you can update your OS without activation. So you get the needed .NET Software.

You need the Intel Management driver 10.0.31.1000_1.5M, because you have a Z97 chip set.
Intel Rapid Start driver / Intel Smart Connect driver: only needed if this functions are enabled in UEFI.
AppCharger delivers more power to USB ports to charge mobile devices faster, so it depends on if you need this.
SATA Floppy Image: NO.
Intel Rapid Storage is the Intel SATA driver for AHCI and RAID, so YES.
VGA driver: YES or NO, if you only want the dedicated graphics card, then disable the internal graphics chip in UEFI and don't install the driver.

The only optional utility that makes sense (IMHO) is A-Tuning.

Thanks Sands. I did some more research on the drivers what I read lines up with what you are saying. On the Intel Management Driver, you are saying I only need the 1.5M version. Any idea what 5M version does? I am just curious.


On the Intel Rapid Start Driver, I will install this driver and enable it in UEFI. I like the fact that the PC will wake from sleep faster. The Smart Connect Driver updates social media and is really not important to me. If I want to see what is happening on Facebook or Twitter, I will open a browser window and go the site.

[SandsOfTime]

Re: Drivers for ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 Mother Board... Which ones?

I don't know why ASRock lists the 5M version of Intel Management driver for this board since only the Qxx (like Q87) and Bxx (like B85) chip sets from intel needs this version.