At $258 the ASUS X99-A is one of the more affordably priced X99 motherboards on the market and The Tech Report thoroughly tested it to see what, if anything, is lacking. The board still has the "OC Socket" with extra pins which allow the certifiably insane to up their CPU voltage to 1.8V, it retains the M.2 socket, the DDR4 can hit 3000MHz even with all 8 slots populated and three of its six PCIe slots can be used together for SLI or Crossfire. In fact The Tech Report has a very nice illustration showing how the board works with both 28 lane and 40 lane Haswell-E processors. Check out the results of their testing right here.
"Rather than loading up on flashy extras and extraneous accessories, Asus' X99-A motherboard focuses on the basics. It has a sensible spec, loads of builder-friendly features, and a diverse array of powerful tweaking options. Read on to see what makes this our favorite Haswell-E motherboard to date."
Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:
- ASUS X99-PRO Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
- Gigabyte Z97N-Gaming 5 @ eTeknix
- Gigabyte X99 SOC Force Overclocking Motherboard Review @ Hardware Asylum
- Asus Maximus VII Gene Motherboard Review @ TechwareLabs
- ASRock QC5000-ITX Motherboard (and A4-5000 CPU) @ Hardware Secrets
There is a typo in the first
There is a typo in the first sentence. Z99 instead of X99.
Ya, that weren’t too bright,
Ya, that weren't too bright, sorry.
“ASUS’ Z99-A, they trimmed
“ASUS’ Z99-A, they trimmed the price but not the features”
X99 not Z99. It’s right in the tags though. The tech report diagram shows an “x6” PCIe off the chipset. Is that a typo? I haven’t seen an “x6” before. You only get x4 on the last (?) physical x16 slot with a 28 lane processor.
I do belive it is a typo,
I do belive it is a typo, guess I am not the only one with brain farts about this board 😉
40-Lane CPU-
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16, x16/x16, x16/x16/x8) *1
28-Lane CPU-
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 ( x16, x16/x8, x16/x8/x4) *2
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode) *3
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 (x1 mode) *3
http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99A/specifications/
Interesting that the m.2 is
Interesting that the m.2 is directly connected to the cpu. Have previous boards allowed this? I don’t think it really matters from a performance perspective though.
It sounds like you would not
It sounds like you would not be able to us sata based m.2 via these connectors and there is not very many native PCI-e m.2 cards available yet.
Researching before upgrading
Researching before upgrading to x99 read that these asus x99 -a/deluxe out of the rest of the x99 boards were the worst when it came to vcore stability when OC.