ASRock X99 OC Formula review - Introduction

ASRock X99 Formula OC motherboard

ASRock has shipped us their ASRock X99 OC Formula. The motherboard can supply "1300W" of maximum CPU power using its 12-phase CPU VRM. This phat X99 motherboard comes with eight DDR4 DIMM slots can support up to 128 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory. Yeah, what candy is to kids, this platform is for enthusiast PC gamers. As expensive as this upgrade is, we all like it, love it and if possible would buy it. The motherboard manufacturers know this, and as such they developed some X99 motherboards that are almost ridiculous in design. 

The Intel Core i7-5960X and other Haswell-E chips have been released on the market September 2014 and based on a new socket LGA2011-V3 infrastructure and DDR4 quad channel memory. The new Haswell-E series being released feature three models, two 6-core and one 8 core processor series intended for the most high-end desktops anno 2014. For Intel it is the first 8 core desktop CPU for consumers. However Intel has been offering 8 and even 12 core processors in their Xeon server line for quite some time now to the business channel. With the new Haswell-E processor comes a new chipset and slightly revised processor socket. Intel still uses Socket 2011, but it's a revision 3 socket, meaning that the older Socket 2011 will not work on the new X99 chipset motherboards. That of course goes both ways, you cannot use Haswell-E on say an X79 motherboard. Interesting is a first introduction towards DDR4 memory. The new memory allows for lower voltage memory modules, this memory defaults towards 2133 MHz at 1.2 Volts. However the memory controller is quad-channel compatible. As a result with overclocked memory at roughly 3 GHz, you can reach 70 maybe 80 GB/sec on your memory bandwidth, which are insane numbers. In this article we'll have a chat about a X99 motherboard in terms of the chipset and then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-5960X and X99 Platform.

The OC Formula series really are the ASRock flagship products, this is enthusiast class alright. This board will come with nice PC options like 8-pin EPS connectors, a digital phase VRM design for the processor and memory, five PCI-Express x16 slots . There is an extra EMI shield that covers audio, The board comes with two Gigabit NICs. Storage wise you will get ten SATA 6 Gb/s and not one but two M.2 slots. Overclocking features are wide and diverse, the board comes with a diagnostic POST LED display. 

So join Guru3D in an extensive review and overview of what ASRock has to offer with the OC Formula motherboard. Next page please, but have a quick peek first. Oh yes, it is quite yellow eh ?