ASRock X99X Killer review - Introduction

ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer motherboard

ASRock has shipped us their Fatal1ty X99 Killer. The motherboard can supply "1300W" of maximum CPU power using its 12-phase CPU VRM. This X99 motherboard comes with eight DDR4 DIMM slots and can support up to 128 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory.  It has a nice feature set like SLI/Crossfire support, heaps of SATA3 connectors, M.2., good tweaking features, a near audiophile audio solution, and yeah the means to tweak. Join us in another X99 motherboard review.

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 Fatal1ty Killer series really are the ASRock high-end products, touching enthusiast class. This board will come with nice PC options like 8-pin EPS connectors, a digital phase VRM design for the processor and memory, three PCI-Express x16 slots . There is an extra EMI shield that covers audio, The board comes with two Gigabit jacks (one Intel and One Killer NIC). Storage wise you will get ten SATA 6 Gb/s and one M.2 slot. 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 Fatal1ty X99X Killer motherboard. Next page please, but have a quick peek first. Oh yes, it is quite red on the eyes alright  ..