ASUS X99 Deluxe LGA 2011-v3 Motherboard Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

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ASUS X99 Deluxe LGA 2011-v3 Motherboard Review - ASUS X99 Deluxe promises to be a premium performance motherboard at a premium price. On paper it has the DNA to power any dream machine if your budget is big enough. With this new motherboard and chipset we get a new Intel Core i7 CPU as well, the venerable 6 and 8 core Haswell-E parts on an LGA 2001-v3 socket.
 
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If only I had the money for this platform...

I know it's overkill compared some z97 setups you can get that for gaming will be just as fast or close enough, but you can't deny that this board is SO nice looking and performs well and is decked out in features. Just imagining all the cool cases and system builds that people can do with this thing is exciting.
 
Im trying to decide if I'm going to tak ethe leap now, or wait a few months - but its definitely X99, and 80 percent certain Im building off of this board. This plus the ThunderboltEX add on card makes my workload dreams come true.
 
Nice board, tempting but with no immediate need, I decided to wait for the platform to mature before jumping in.
 
I am running 2666 on my GA-X99-Gaming G1 without modifying the bootstrap. I will have to give 2800 a shot tonight.
 
I decided to pick up a cheap Xeon for my aging Rampage III - hoping that will satiate my upgrade-lust until the next Tic. I too would like to see DDR4 speeds and prices to improve.
 
Thanks for the review! Definitely on the very top of my list for a 5960X build! Just think how beautifully it would match a Corsair Graphite760T Arctic White. ;) :D
 
lthough I have had a couple days now playing with the MSI X99S XPOWER as well
Are you going to do a review of the MSI X99S XPOWER too? MSI is touting Steam OS support (Linux Support). Although I am sure the kernel has drivers for both boards, it would be nice not to hide that I use Linux if I ever have to RMA.
 
If only I had the money for this platform...

I know it's overkill compared some z97 setups you can get that for gaming will be just as fast or close enough, but you can't deny that this board is SO nice looking and performs well and is decked out in features. Just imagining all the cool cases and system builds that people can do with this thing is exciting.

This is exactly what I was thinking when I saw this board. It tugs pretty hard at the completely impractical, totally impulsive side of me that would love to build systems just cause they look pretty.
 
Nice full figured board.

Waiting to see what the ROG boards have to offer.

I like the "Formula" brand.
 
I am really annoyed by that and will stick with my current setup then.
 
They're only selling the extreme. The formula and gene are not expected anytime soon (if that).

Well, that sucks.
That being said, the Formula is generally a few months behind the Extreme.

I have a hard time seeing ASUS not exploit the popularity of the Formula and Gene.
 
Well, that sucks.
That being said, the Formula is generally a few months behind the Extreme.

I have a hard time seeing ASUS not exploit the popularity of the Formula and Gene.

Never say never, but it's no surprise to me. ASUS didn't do an Maximus VII Extreme this time around leaving the Formula at the top spot. In the X99 family I expect to see the product stack trimmed down as well. People who go for X99 are probably going to go all out and additional product differentiation is probably unnecessary. There is quite a bit of overlap on features and performance with the Formula and Extreme motherboards. I've told ASUS many times that they needed to stop making the formula and extreme boards effectively compete with each other and that if they had combined the features of both into one motherboard they would have the ultimate high end solution.

What I hope happens is that the LGA1150 based boards have formula as their highest end offering which is the case right now as no extreme version is planned as far as I know. I hope they reserve the extreme moniker for the LGA2011-V3 and subsequent HEDT offerings. In my opinion the ROG line almost encompasses too many motherboards these days. It used to be just Extreme and Gene, then formula, ranger, impact and hero got added to the mix. I like ROG motherboards and use them all the time myself but I think there are too many of them at this point.

As for the Gene, I'd hope to see one in X99 format but I don't know that we will. The HEDT small form factor crowd isn't a huge money maker and I'd wager that people who desire such a motherboard are a small group. Motherboards like the P8Z77-I Deluxe almost never saw the light of day as a result of their limited market appeal. One of the biggest draws of X99 over Z97 is the larger expansion capabilities due to the increased PCI-Express lanes. This is a feature that's lost on an mATX form factor motherboard. Now that's not the only draw for such a platform so that lost expansion slot area isn't a concern for all, but when your making business decisions it makes sense to spend your resources on the market that will have the biggest impact to your bottom line.

So never say never, but I'd be somewhat surprised to see a gene board anytime soon with an X99 chipset on it.
 
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Fixed, thanks for the extra eyes. - Kyle

Sweet board, though. I'm somewhat hesitant about the white plastic look, but a solid board.
The board, generally Makes me think of my old P5B-Deluxe Wifi/AP I ran years ago. Never been disappointed with any of the Asus Deluxe-series boards I've used.
 
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Fixed, thanks for the extra eyes. - Kyle

Sweet board, though. I'm somewhat hesitant about the white plastic look, but a solid board.
The board, generally Makes me think of my old P5B-Deluxe Wifi/AP I ran years ago. Never been disappointed with any of the Asus Deluxe-series boards I've used.

I really liked the white / black color scheme of the board. When you stare at as much black and red as I do it gets old after awhile. That's why I was sad to see GIGABYTE ditch the green black and go red black like everyone else.
 
I couldn't imagine these X99 boards from Asus doing terrible. These platforms have do many usb3 ports makes me want to buy one just to have an external hdd farm.

Great review guys, I had one question though: it says this board has a 64gb ddr4 limit, is that an actual logic limit or is it due to there being 8 slots and no sticks being greater than 8gb?
 
I couldn't imagine these X99 boards from Asus doing terrible. These platforms have do many usb3 ports makes me want to buy one just to have an external hdd farm.

Great review guys, I had one question though: it says this board has a 64gb ddr4 limit, is that an actual logic limit or is it due to there being 8 slots and no sticks being greater than 8gb?

May be a CPU imposed limit, as Intel also mentions 64GB - http://ark.intel.com/products/82931
 
64GB is Intel limit (for now). Maybe once 16GB DIMMs are out they may validate, tough to say. Usually comes down to whether they can validate at a given speed while meeting TDP targets and ensure stability at stock voltages.
 
I see no point in upgrading from X58 right now, but I want to say one thing about this particular board. Asus crammed tons of interesting features and they spoiled everything with useless Realtek audio. Seriously why they bother at all? Give user a choice and leave that area blank (better airflow for VRMs) or put some nice Xonar (and rack up more $$$ from asking price).

It's not only Asus problem of course. All manufacturers often creating motherboards just for artistic value/factor: "Included Features List". Art just for the sake of art is no art at all. Shitty features just for the sake of connectivity are pointless.

Anyway... will decide on upgrade when big RAM modules are available [and affordable]. Whole point of max 128GB is possibility of creating big RAMDisk.
 
I couldn't imagine these X99 boards from Asus doing terrible. These platforms have do many usb3 ports makes me want to buy one just to have an external hdd farm.

Great review guys, I had one question though: it says this board has a 64gb ddr4 limit, is that an actual logic limit or is it due to there being 8 slots and no sticks being greater than 8gb?

The limit is in the CPU itself. Even if it weren't the motherboards haven't been validated for larger DIMMs. In other words even if Intel comes out with a CPU that fits this socket tomorrow that can handle 128GB of RAM the X99 Deluxe and other current X99 motherboards will still effectively be limited to 64GB.
 
Hope that newer BIOS fixes the hang problem that kyle and others had


I am using BIOS 0801 now and it is working very well. Got my Core i7-5820K running a fairly solid 4.7GHz / 2666MHz at 1.35v core voltage and 1.94v input voltage. Held full Prime95 for 1.5 hours. Not the greatest stability but likely good enough to hold anything on the desktop stable. Going to run some encode tests now.
 
Did not hang in there. I don't want to push a lot higher on this CPU and torch it. Moving back to 4.6GHz at 1.30v and 1.90v.
 
Kyle and Dan,

These new motherboards and upgraded chipsets, DDR4, and other infrastructure improvements are great and all but I can't be the only [H] reader wishing Intel would put 10GBe into their chipsets at some point.

We've been on 1GBe for so long now and I've come to realize that 10GBe won't move towards the mainstream until Intel makes its move. When do we see this happen? Broadwell-E? Skylake-E?
 
Kyle and Dan,

These new motherboards and upgraded chipsets, DDR4, and other infrastructure improvements are great and all but I can't be the only [H] reader wishing Intel would put 10GBe into their chipsets at some point.

We've been on 1GBe for so long now and I've come to realize that 10GBe won't move towards the mainstream until Intel makes its move. When do we see this happen? Broadwell-E? Skylake-E?

I really don't understand why worry so much about chipset bandwidth.
What can't you do with the current 2.5GB bandwidth?
Where is the limitation?

IMHO the limitation is in the people mind only.
We are still on 500MB/sec SSD, so how could you saturate 2.5GB?

When M.2 SSDs became more widespread, 1GB/sec could be the "new bandwidth", you can even RAID 0 two drives like that, so why worry?
Worry about what?
 
I really don't understand why worry so much about chipset bandwidth.
What can't you do with the current 2.5GB bandwidth?
Where is the limitation?

IMHO the limitation is in the people mind only.
We are still on 500MB/sec SSD, so how could you saturate 2.5GB?

When M.2 SSDs became more widespread, 1GB/sec could be the "new bandwidth", you can even RAID 0 two drives like that, so why worry?
Worry about what?

What?

I'm not even sure you read my post before you went on your rant.

The limitation I'm talking about is Gigabit Ethernet which has a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 125MB/sec. This is nothing like what you were talking about.
 
What?

I'm not even sure you read my post before you went on your rant.

The limitation I'm talking about is Gigabit Ethernet which has a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 125MB/sec. This is nothing like what you were talking about.

oops, sorry, I tought you are talking about the 2.5GB bandwidth limitation that all people talks about this days.
 
Can you elaborate a bit more?
What this input voltage is used for?

Isn't sufficient to higher the vcore voltage for a 4.3GHz overclock?

The CPU input voltage is the voltage supplied to the CPU externally. This is what the CPU has available coming in. CPU Vcore is what comes from the IVR internally. The chips and how well they overclock can vary quite a bit. 4.3GHz may be attainable on some CPUs with only a Vcore adjustment. What I've seen so far (with less sampling than Kyle has) is that the CPU I used in this review only needed the Vcore adjusted between 1.28v and 1.31v for Prime95 stability at 4.5GHz. I ultimately used 1.28v at 4.45GHz with a memory clock of DDR3 2800MHz. I felt this was the best I could attain from this setup at the time. BIOS 0801 will address the issues of running certain memory clocks with the 100MHz strap setting.

Kyle and Dan,

These new motherboards and upgraded chipsets, DDR4, and other infrastructure improvements are great and all but I can't be the only [H] reader wishing Intel would put 10GBe into their chipsets at some point.

We've been on 1GBe for so long now and I've come to realize that 10GBe won't move towards the mainstream until Intel makes its move. When do we see this happen? Broadwell-E? Skylake-E?

While I'd like to see faster network speeds on the built in NICs I can't help but feel it's something that just isn't that important right now. Most people don't have gigabit internet connections and even if they did they wouldn't saturate them. 10GbE switches aren't common place either. Someone needs to put their foot forward in the market place to force the rest of the pieces into place but I don't think that will be Intel honestly.
 
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While I'd like to see faster network speeds on the built in NICs I can't help but feel it's something that just isn't that important right now. Most people don't have gigabit internet connections and even if they did they wouldn't saturate them. 10GbE switches aren't common place either. Someone needs to put their foot forward in the market place to force the rest of the pieces into place but I don't think that will be Intel honestly.

I'm not at all concerned about Internet speed being limited by Gigabit, I'm more concerned about internal. If Intel isn't the company to make the big push who is?

Hopefully by time 14nm is about to be superseded by the next die shrink we'll see Intel's 22nm fabs making chipsets where throwing in 10GBe won't be a big deal.

Surely I'm not the only one here who does a file transfer on his LAN that curses the "slow" 115MB/s speed limit. We have these fantastic SSD's now, we could go much faster.
 
64GB is Intel limit (for now). Maybe once 16GB DIMMs are out they may validate, tough to say. Usually comes down to whether they can validate at a given speed while meeting TDP targets and ensure stability at stock voltages.

Thankyou for the response.
 
Speaking of the RAM on these things, when you get a chance it might be nice to test performance with 4 DIMMs vs 8 DIMMs. I wonder if the bank switching has any noticeable impact on performance or not.



I'm not at all concerned about Internet speed being limited by Gigabit, I'm more concerned about internal. If Intel isn't the company to make the big push who is?

You don't want to pay the price you'd have to. 10gbit NICs are large, hot, and expensive. Intel's X540 NIC has a TDP of about 13 watts just for the NIC alone and is a pretty sizable chip. It also runs about $500. Not the kind of thing you want stuck on your motherboard if you don't need it.

10gig is a premium interconnect right now and so is only used when needed. Eventually lithography shrinks and technology improvements will probably make it cheap and low power enough to be something that you "just include" because why not, but it is too much extra right now to justify.

It's expensive enough that in the data center you often use CX4 cables/connectors since despite the higher cable cost, much shorter range, and different connector, it keeps the overall cost down for the 10gig links.

Do you really want to double the price of your motherboard just to have something you can't use without a new expensive switch, and new cables (you need Cat-6a for 10gbit)? Oh and said switch draws 200ish watts and so has a really loud fan.

It's just not there yet for home use. Same deal with GigE when it came out. It took time for it to become practical for the home.
 
I'm not at all concerned about Internet speed being limited by Gigabit, I'm more concerned about internal. If Intel isn't the company to make the big push who is?

Hopefully by time 14nm is about to be superseded by the next die shrink we'll see Intel's 22nm fabs making chipsets where throwing in 10GBe won't be a big deal.

Surely I'm not the only one here who does a file transfer on his LAN that curses the "slow" 115MB/s speed limit. We have these fantastic SSD's now, we could go much faster.

You have to remember that Intel is slow as hell about integrating features into chipsets without some one else pushing that envelope forcing them to be more competitive. They didn't embrace ATA-133 standards, they were slow to integrate USB 3.0, and they were stuck on two SATA 6Gb/s ports for several chipset generations leaving most of our SATA ports the 3Gb/s type. Again Intel isn't fast with integrating features into their chipsets. They tend to milk their features for along time with very incremental upgrades each chipset generation.

The cycle for pushing chipset features is long because there is no one competing with them that matters. Hell even when third party chipsets did compete on more equal footing Intel still wouldn't push features if they didn't have anything to do with the advancement of the spec. ATA-133 is a great example of that. Intel never embraced this standard. If Intel becomes the first to push the 10GbE standard on chipsets you will be waiting awhile which is a very likely scenario.
 
What Is The sense of a 10gbe on a PC?

What sense is it? This is an odd way to view technological progression. The "sense" is that it's faster. Why wouldn't you want that? Why isn't that a good thing? Now this sort of advancement isn't necessarily important right now because few people can leverage that kind of bandwidth regularly at the moment. Eventually you will see 10GbE in homes. At one point GbE networks in the home was viewed as ludicrous and now it's common place. The same thing will happen with 10GbE given enough time.
 
Honestly I could use 10Gbe, but it wouldn't be very beneficial, at least not worth the cost of upgrade. Just backed up over 4TB's worth of data to my new JBOD at about 100megs a sec, few hours later it was done and I didn't really care.

I think when I start the 4k plunge I may care about it but not right now.
 
Honestly I could use 10Gbe, but it wouldn't be very beneficial, at least not worth the cost of upgrade. Just backed up over 4TB's worth of data to my new JBOD at about 100megs a sec, few hours later it was done and I didn't really care.

I think when I start the 4k plunge I may care about it but not right now.

For the most part my network transfers are almost always on the large side. 10GbE would benefit me, but not at the current cost of implementing it. I suspect that's true for most people right now.
 
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