ASUS X99 Deluxe Review

[hiwa]

Hey guys X99 NDA is over we have several boards and memory to review.

Let's start with ASUS X99 Deluxe
With the X99 Deluxe, ASUS for sure has one of the most interesting boards ready at launch. First of all they're suprising with a new color scheme and as always with the Deluxe, there are countless features. A quick look reveals for example that there are two SATA Express ports as well as an M.2 x4 SSD slot. At this point we're already really curious to find out what this board is capable of.




With their Classic Series motherboard ASUS always have interesting products in their portfolio and in the past it happened quite frequently that the "Deluxe board" from ASUS was the most mature model available at launch day. For obvious reasons, this makes us really curious about what we can expect from this board on the following pages.


http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smart...hp?itemid=1423

BIOS screenshots

http://ocaholic.ch/modules/xcgal/thu...php?album=3655

Picture Gallery

http://ocaholic.ch/modules/xcgal/thu...php?album=3651


Conclusion

Allgemein + -
The X99 Deluxe from ASUS means business. Already at launch day, ASUS has a mature motherboard in its portfolio. Compared to the predecessor the motherboard maker changed the color scheme from black/gold to black/white, which in our opinion is quite a bit more attractive. As usual you get a plethora of features with ASUS's Deluxe motherboard. In this regard it doesn't matter wheter you're looking for a beefed-up audio solution or the possibility to install up to four graphics cards. Apart from that you can create a RAID with up to eight SATA-III drives using the X99 PCH.

Pros

- Design
- Layout
- Standard ATX

Cons

- Price

Layout + -
The ASUS X99 Deluxe'slLayout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons. There is also a debug display which is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. Apart from that also the placement of the PCI-Express x16 slots is very well chosen. There is a total of five full sized PCI Express slots and between the first two PCI Express x16 slots there is an PCIe x1. Should you want to do that you can go ahead and build a quad-GPU system using this board as a basis. We also like the fact, that there are two SATA Express ports as well as an additional M.2 x4 slot. These ports to attach different storage media greatly adds to the flexibility of this board.

Pros

- Angled SATA connectors - 5 x Full-Size PCI Express x16
- Power/Reset-Button onboard
- Debug display
- Space around the CPU socket - M.2
- SATA Express

Performance + -
Let's have closer look at overall 3D performance. Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board comes in second overall. Concerning the average of all 2D benchmarks we ran, this board again scores a second place. Before launch we've received six boards for testing and the X99 Deluxe was, without the shadow of a doubt, the one model with the most mature BIOS. On another note we had a look at power consumption and in this case we clearly see that we have a board here that has been equipped with many additional chips. Nevertheless this board again scores second in our performance/watt rating.

Pros

- 3DMark Ice Storm
- 3DMark 11 Total
- SiSoft
- Cinebench

Overclocking / BIOS + -
As you might have expected from ASUS you get an excellent BIOS which offers not only a boatload of tuning and tweaking options but is also very easy to use. Finding the right menus in a recent ASUS BIOS is not difficult at all, which is not only thanks to the graphical user interface but also comes from the well-thought structure.

Pros

- Clear arrangement
- Sheer amount of options
- Stability

Recommendation + -
Should you be looking for a high-end motherboard, which is based on Intels new X99 chipset, then the X99 Deluxe is a great choice, but obviously you should have the necessary cash. If we check Geizhals.at these days, we find this board listet for 339 Euro

Pros

- Enthusiast
- Workstation
- Gaming

Rating
We give the ASUS X99 Deluxe excellent 5 out of 5 stars.

[flamenko]

Can you test an SSD with your system optimized in AS SSD and post it?