Introduction

ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard - Dark Chocolate with Snow White Frosting

In this review we check out the ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard, armed with the X99 chipset and is covered in a chocolate dark design with white frosting on top of it. A very nice looking motherboard. It isn't about the looks though as this is a high performance motherboard with a massive feature set like SLI/Crossfire support, AC WIFI, heaps of SATA3 connectors, M.2., overclock features, a cool audio solution, M.2. PCIe compatibility and yeah the means to overclock. 

The Intel Core i7-5960X and other Haswell-E chips are 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 1 8 core processor series intended for the most high-end desktops anno 2014. For Intel is 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, a new chipset comes along as well as a 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 the move 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 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.

 Now we have plenty to look at as the motherboard manufacturers went totally nuts and started redesigning their motherboards, added new features and made them extraordinarily cool. You'll spot new redesigns build on the DNA of the Deluxe series yet improved massively. Cool looks with new white covers, features like 3x3 802.11 a/b/g/n/AC WIFI, M2 SSDs and SATA Express will bring some very interesting features onto the market. ASUS markets this motherboard with 5-Way Optimization as it combines TPU, EPU, DIGI+ Power Control, Fan App functions to push the system Xpert 3 and Turbo Apps. ASUS takes overclocking even a step further as they have an LGA2011 OC socket. The Haswell-E CPUs actually have a few more pins that are not used. ASUS designed a socket allowing them to use these pins and that way they can add a little more voltage to the CPU and DDR4 memory allowing higher voltages with LN2 based overclocking. Next to that you will notice a Fan extension card and a Hyper M.2 X 4 add-on board for M.2. PCIe SSDs.

Join us in another X99 motherboard review, a product that is bound to tease and please.