ASRock X79 Extreme11 Review: PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 and LSI 8-Way SAS/SATA
by Ian Cutress on September 3, 2012 10:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- X79
- LSI
- PLX
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly donating hardware for our test bed:
OCZ for donating the Power Supply and USB testing SSD
Micron for donating our SATA testing SSD
G.Skill for donating our memory kits
ASUS for donating AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit
ECS for donating NVIDIA GPUs
ASRock and ADATA for organizing loan of the RAID SSDs
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel i7-3960X (6C/12T, 3.3 GHz) |
| Motherboards | ASRock X79 Extreme11 |
| Cooling | Intel All-In-One Liquid Cooler |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series |
| Memory | GSkill RipjawsZ 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 9-11-11 Kit 1.65 V |
| Memory Settings | XMP |
| Video Cards |
ASUS 7970 3GB GDDR5 ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 |
| Hard Drive |
Corsair Force GT 60GB Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| RAID Testing | ADATA SX910 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex3 240GB |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
Despite the fact that the PLX chips can be power gated when not in use, at idle there is still a little overhead in power usage from the PLX+LSI combination. Nevertheless, the additional power required by the ASUS ROG boards at loading means that the ASRock draws less power during both Metro 2033 and OCCT.
POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
Unlike other ASRock motherboards, the X79 Extreme11 actually has a long time to boot. Even longer if you decide to boot from the LSI chip, or have Intel RAID arrays present.
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StevoLincolnite - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
Chipset fans.WHY!? They're noisy, probably fail quickly when filled up with dust...
I have the Asus Sabertooth x79 which has 2 small fans on it and the noise they generate drives me bonkers, thankfully the board has a 5 year warranty... Heck most of these chipset fans aren't even a standardized size so replacing them on your own is going to be tough/impossible.
Grebuloner - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
I think you might want to check your board or your case cooling setup then. I can't hear the fans on my Sabertooth unless I stick my ear up to the grill on the I/O plate, and the chipset fan is inaudible over the 580 it sits next to.owan - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Its not rocket science, its right there in the review: 35+W underneath a very low-profile heatsink. Passive cooling just wasn't going to cut it. I swear, if people are going to complain about stuff on this motherboard, they could do a lot better than whinging about the fan.Master_shake_ - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
i have an LSI 9260 add in card and that thing gets super hot, and the fan on this is really loud...just check out linus tech tips on youtube and you can hear it.
mike55 - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
What are those little box-shaped components that are in the center of the CPU socket and appear in the dozens on every PCB I've ever seen?Ditiris - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
They're capacitors for the CPU, more specifically decoupling capacitors.mike55 - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
Ah, thanks! Good to finally know what the heck those things are.LamborghiniBooby43 - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
As the X79 chipset does not have USB 3.0 as standard, ASRock have included Texas Instrument USB 3.0 controllers for a total of eight ports (4 on the back panel, 4 via two onboard headers) and a 2-port front USB panel included in the box. http://goo.gl/XbQv9JMC2000 - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
If ASRock says this board is aimed at the workstation user, why in the world did they put those useless decorative metal shields on the heatsinks? Those things just scream out 'Gamer' to me.I would like to see someone build a dual-2011 socket board utilizing 4 of the PLX8747 chips.
Belard - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
Yep... A Workstation board is just that... They don't need all the bling. Yes, this board has workstation features - but this looks nothing more than a board for an uber gamer who has money to spend.Of course, what game makes use of 4 gaming cards (yeah, the slots are only useful for rendering / compute type work).
Still, if you want to have EVERYTHING possible... this should be it.