Asrock X79 Extreme9

Asrock offered the best blindside for the buck in previous motherboard roundups, offering respectable features at unbeatable prices. At kickoff glance, the X79 Extreme9 seems to buck that trend with an intimidating price of $345, simply that price seems justified based on the spec sheet alone.

Whereas the Asus P9X79 Palatial was limited to 3-way SLI, the X79 Extreme9 supports four Nvidia and AMD GPUs using PCIe x8/x8/x8/x8 -- at to the lowest degree on paper, anyhow. Although the technology is there, the board doesn't seem to have enough room for four private dual-slot cards.

The X79 Extreme9 has viii DIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM. Using the chipset'south quad-channel memory compages, it supports frequencies of 1866, 1600, 1333 and 1066MHz, while 2400 and 2133MHz are possible with overclocking -- no different than y'all'll find on Asus' contender.

Whereas the X79 chipset provides six SATA ports (two 6Gb/southward), Asrock has included three Marvell 6Gb/due south controllers for another six ports: the Marvell SE9172 provides iv SATA 6Gb/s ports, while the Marvell SE9220 supplies two more. Ane of the SE9172 chips backs a pair of eSATA 6Gb/southward ports on the I/O panel.

Network connectivity comes from two Broadcom BCM57781 controllers, which support Wake-On-LAN, Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az and Teaming. The configuration is a little unusual as only one of the ii Gigabit Ethernet ports tin actually be found on the I/O panel. The other is located on Asrock's Game Blaster carte (similar to Asus' Thunderbolt).

Forth with the Broadcom part, the PCI Express x1 Game Equalizer card supplies the X79 Extreme9's audio. Using the Creative Sound Core3D sound, information technology supports THX TruStudio PRO, CrystalVoice, EAX v.0 and full Blu-ray Profile 2.0 Sound Decoder Back up.

Asrock has tasked two Texas Instruments TUSB7340 controllers with delivering the X79 Extreme9 USB iii.0 connectivity. The TUSB7340 is a USB 3.0 xHCI compliant host controller supporting up to four downstream ports using PCIe x1 Gen 2. One controller powers 4 ports on the motherboard'southward I/O panel, while the other supports a pair of onboard headers for another 4 connectors.

The X79 Extreme9 also offers FireWire via the VIA VT6315N controller which uses the PCIe x1 interface and supports two 400Mb/s IEEE1394a ports (i via the I/O panel, one via header).

While the Asus P9X79 Deluxe has a Digital 16 + iv Stage CPU power design, the Asrock X79 Extreme9 uses a Digital sixteen + 2 Phase CPU set up. There are 16 phases for the CPU and ii phases for the System Agent. Nosotros expect this to yield similar enough results to Asus' configuration.

Nosotros have few qualms most Asrock'south design, though the X79 chip is cooled by a small 35mm fan, which are notoriously unreliable. You'll discover like features to Asus' lath, including onboard power and reset buttons likewise as a diagnostic LED screen. Asrock'southward UEFI BIOS is well designed, making it easy to navigate all the settings.

Based on this preliminary overview, the X79 Extreme9 is quite impressive and nosotros recall enthusiasts upgrading to LGA2011 will find enough of reasons to justify its steep admission fee.