Best X99 Motherboards: Holiday 2014

X99 No Limits

Halo motherboards require users with either very deep pockets or very specific needs. X99 is already a premium platform, catering for a small amount of the market, but this is ultimately the land of the enthusiast or the prosumer. Barring some kind of lottery win, this users are typically aged between 25-40 and want to invest in their entertainment or their business. As a result, some manufacturers oblige with their most prestigious products – ones that might make a loss per unit, but give something money cannot buy: brand recognition and that halo viewpoint.

ASUS Rampage V Extreme at $476

To that end, the two of the most expensive X99 motherboards on Newegg right now are actually two motherboards we have in to review but have not tested. The ASUS ROG Rampage V Extreme follows a long line of successful ROG products. ASUS did not produce a Z97 ROG Extreme version because they were working on this model in order to replicate the successes of the X79 Rampage IV Extreme being their best seller.

The big benefit for previous Rampage IV Extreme users moving to the new platform is the chipset, with more SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, M.2 and SATAe support. Similarly to last generation, the motherboard has the ROG OC Panel bundled which costs $100 separately. The hardware and software is all updated for X99, giving 3T3R 802.11ac WiFi, Sonic Radar 2, 5-Way Optimization, Sound Stage and other features also found on the X99-Deluxe.

The Rampage is a little different in that ASUS’ ROG R&D spend significant time in terms of overclocking potential, increasing margins and compatibility with other high end components: CPU, GPU, DRAM. The Rampage is also targeted at extreme overclockers, giving them suitable ranges of BIOS options to go a little bit mental with liquid nitrogen and breaking overclocking records.

ASRock X99 Extreme11 at $650

In a similar mindset but a different direction, ASRock now has established their Extreme11 line as a high end model focused on lots of storage and lots of GPU power. At the time of writing, the X99 Extreme11 is the most expensive motherboard on the market, and this is because of two reasons. Firstly, the LSI 3008 RAID chip on the board gives the system an extra 8 SAS/SATA 6 Gbps ports with enough bandwidth from eight PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU. This complements the 10 SATA 6 Gbps ports from the chipset, for 18 in total.

Next is the PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 support for four-way GPU arrangements (or x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 for 7-way compute), available due to the dual PLX8747 chips used on board. We covered these in our Z77 PLX coverage, and for an extra $60-$80 cost on the motherboard each, these act as PCIe lane FIFO buffers and muxes to improve inter-GPU bandwidth. For good measure ASRock also gives the motherboard the high end treatment from power delivery, dual Intel NICs, improved Realtek ALC1150 audio and connected heatsinks. Due to the power output of the LSI 3008 and PLX8747 chips, the heatsink uses a fan which can be controlled via software.

We have both the Rampage V Extreme and X99 Extreme11 in the office for future reviews. Stay tuned for those.