ASRock X79 Extreme11 Review: PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 and LSI 8-Way SAS/SATA

ASRock X79 Extreme11

To conclude, it is hard to judge a motherboard like the ASRock X79 Extreme11.  With no other major competing products offering similar functionality, ASRock can charge a pretty penny for the product.  However, does it still retain the usefulness or bang for buck in terms of performance?

For your $600 of green, the main selling point is the X79 platform mixed with two PLX PEX 8747 chips which allow four PCIe devices to be run at x16/x16/x16/x16 in PCIe 3.0 or up to seven devices to be run at x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 also in PCIe 3.0.  This combination leaves eight PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU, which are directed straight into an LSI SAS 2308 PCIe 3.0 RAID controller.  This LSI chip gives eight ports capable of SAS2/SATA 6 Gbps speeds, in RAID 0, 1 or 10 configurations.  An equivalent PCIe 3.0 card would set a user back several hundred as well as taking up a PCIe slot.

On top of the PLX and LSI chips, we also get a full-bodied X79 motherboard, featuring eight memory slots, dual Broadcom NIC capable of Teaming/Link Aggregation, a Creative Core3D sound chip, enhanced power delivery, and eight USB 3.0 ports via TI controllers.  Software comes in the XFast flavors, with XFast RAM taking advantage of the ability of X79 to hold more memory.  The board itself is also supports a multitude of Xeon processors, as well as ECC memory with the Xeons.  There is a good amount in the box too, such as six SATA cables and a USB 3.0 panel, but it should be noted that this internal bundle is similar to cheaper ASRock products.  The only thing missing in my opinion would be a WiFi connection on the IO, similar to that done by ECS.

Performance wise, the X79 Extreme11 does not win many accolades.  It performs similarly or worse than other X79 motherboards in the market - in our GPU testing, the board continuously came near the bottom.  The separation ASRock likes to make with the X79 Extreme11 is the PCIe functionality and the ability to include SAS drives on board - the speed of the extra ports reached a staggering 4.0 GBps, even though that may not be a realistic use scenario.  The extra ports also are a little hampered by not having additional cache to help with writing short transfer sizes like on a PCIe card.

With our testing, and the price range of this motherboard, it is safe to say that this product is more aimed at workstation projects, such as an 8-core Xeon with ECC, rather than a product for gamers or overclockers.  Tool it up with eight SAS drives, seven single slot GPUs, and away you go with a nice number crunching machine.  Instead of paying in terms of price for performance, we are all talking about price for functionality here.

As a technical exercise, what ASRock have done is pretty amazing.  In terms of pure innovation in a relatively stagnant market, I have to award the ASRock X79 Extreme11 a bronze award for pushing boundaries and enabling innovation in the motherboard market.  This motherboard, paired with a deep wallet, could be a number crunching machine for video or audio enthusiasts, or GPU crunchers who yearn PCIe bandwidth but also SAS compatibility.  This is strictly an enthusiast’s motherboard.

ASRock X79 Extreme11
AnandTech Editor’s Choice Bronze Award