ASRock X79 Extreme11 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. ASRock X79 Extreme11: Packaging and Bundle3. ASRock X79 Extreme11: Layout and Features4. ASRock X79 Extreme11: BIOS and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: 3DMark 117. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: PCMark 79. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven10. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201211. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.512. Synthetic: Super Pi13. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark14. Real World: Media Encoding15. Synthetic: MKV Playback16. Synthetic: Blu-Ray Playback17. Gaming: Battlefield 318. Gaming: DiRT 319. Technical: Power Consumption20. Closing Thoughts21. View All Pages

ASRock have chosen to use an all black colour scheme for the motherboard which is sure to compliment most other components well.  The motherboard uses a CEB form factor which is a slightly wider version of a regular ATX motherboard.  It has standard ATX fittings and should therefore fit in the majority of ATX certified cases, providing there is enough room to the right of the motherboard stand-offs.

There is a reasonably substantial heatsink above the CPU socket for cooling the power regulation circuitry.  There is also a thick heatpipe running from this area down the side of the CPU socket to the chipset heatsink further down the motherboard. This features a fan to offer active component cooling.

We find two 8-pin power connectors located right on the top edge of the board, nestled behind the large heatsink.

The X79 Extreme11 features eight ran slots in total, four on either side of the CPU socket.  These support non-ECC unbuffered DDR3 2500+(OC)/2133(OC)/1866(OC)/1600/1333/1066 memory in quad channel mode.

On the right hand edge of the motherboard we find the 24-pin power connector alongside two USB3.0 internal headers.

Moving further down the right hand side of the motherboard we find the wide array of SATA3 and SAS2 connectors.  There are two SATA3 connectors and four SATA2 connectors hooked up to the X79 chipset which support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.  There are also eight SAS2/SATA3 ports connected to an onboard LSI SAS2308 PCIe 3.0 controller.  These support RAID 1, 1, 1E and 10.

The X79 Extreme11 certainly isn't lacking when it comes to expansion slots.  There are 7x PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots in total which can run together in speeds of (PCIE1/PCIE2/PCIE3/PCIE4/PCIE5/PCIE6/PCIE7: x16/0/16/0/16/0/16 mode or x16/8/8/8/8/8/8 mode).

There are two PLX PEX8746 bridges which enable 4-way SLI support in Gen3 x16/16/16/16) mode.

The motherboard also supports Quad SLI, 3-way SLI and 2-way SLI as well as AMD Quad CrossFireX, 4-way CrossFireX, 3-Way CrossFireX and Crossfire X.

There are two 4-pin molex connectors on the motherboard which can provide extra power to the PCI Express lanes if required.

Most of the internal headers are located along the bottom edge of the motherboard.  From left to right we find HD Audio, Firewire, the front panel header, a fan header, two USB 2.0 headers and CIR.

The rear I/O panel supports:

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