ASUS X99-A Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
I have reviewed many different ASUS motherboards over the years and they have always been a company that builds from the ground up. So when they release a motherboard series they have a base design and layout that they build off of. This base design typically has everything a user would want when it comes to that platform and then ASUS adds on to that design as they go up the product stack. Some of these boards transform into ASUS’s TUF and ROG series boards. What I am getting at is that even the lower-end board has a great feature set, and that is true with the X99-A motherboard, which is ASUS’s entry-level X99 board.

When you think about the X99 platform what do you want? Well the X99-A gives you eight SATA 6GB/s ports, a SATA Express port, a 32Gb/s M.2 slot, three PCI-Express 3.0 slot, two USB 3.0 headers, ASUS’s own Crystal Sound 2 audio solution, Intel-powered LAN, and six rear USB 3.0 ports. And those are just features you would expect on the X99 platform. ASUS also adds their own O.C. socket, DIGI+ VRM power design, MemOK button, TPU, EPU, and XMP switches and so much more. So many times we see entry-level boards cut out many features and that just is not true with the X99-A.

Not only does ASUS give you a great hardware package on the board they match it with an excellent BIOS and software. ASUS’s UEFI BIOS is great and their EZ-Mode makes using the BIOS very easy, even for a beginner. As I’ve always said ASUS’s AI Suite 3 software is the best motherboard companion software out there and lets you change many settings without going into the BIOS.

When it comes to overclocking you can run the 5-way optimization that is built into the AI Suite 3 software, you can run the EZ Tuning Wizard that is in the BIOS, or of course you can just manually overclock yourself. While manually overclocking I was able to bring our Core i7-5960X from its stock 3.0 GHz all the way up to 4.4 GHz. 4.4 GHz seems to be the wall we have hit with our X99 setup we have here as every motherboard we have tested has not been able to get past that.

So ASUS brings all of the features that we have mentioned to a motherboard for under $300. Being that the X99 platform is an expensive one to get into it is great to see ASUS offer an entry-level board with all of these features. Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASUS X99-A Motherboard a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

rating9 10 small TC award recommended small

Pros:
– Price
– Great performance
– ASUS’s software package
– Easy to overclock, even for beginners
– Crystal Sound 2 audio solution
– Easy to use BIOS
– ASUS exclusive features like MemOK, TPU, EPU, etc.

Cons:
– Not much of an accessory bundle

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