Intel Haswell-E and X99 Chipset Preview

ASRock X99 Motherboards Continued
ASRock X99 OC Formula (full details)
ASRock X99 OC Formula Motherboard

The ASRock X99 OC Formula features ASRock’s conformal coating, Super Alloy design and has been signed by Nick Shih, ASRock’s own in-house overclocker. ASRock has kept their black and gold design with this motherboard so you have an all black PCB with gold / yellow accents. There are a total of four heatsinks on the motherboard, which all are gold. One thing that ASRock really is advertising with this board is the 12 phase VRM design. This board makes use of high-quality components like 50G Aluminum Alloy heatsinks, Premium Alloy Chokes, Dual-Stack MOSFETs, and Japanese made high-quality conductive polymer capacitors. Another thing that is interesting is that you can bring 1300 W of power to the CPU. This is for extreme overclocking situations using liquid nitrogen. There is an 8pin EPS connector as well as an addition 4pin connector.

The LGA 2011-3 socket is surrounded on each side by four DDR4 DIMM slots, which are color-coded for quad-channel operation. To the right of the memory slots we can see some overclocking features like plus and minus buttons to adjust the BCLK, menu button that will boot you directly into the BIOS, PCI-Express dip switches, LN2 mode switch, slow mode switch and voltage checkpoints. Moving down we can see the 24-pin ATX power connection and dual USB 3.0 headers.

There are 10 SATA 6GB/s ports for storage. Power and reset buttons as well as the debug LED can be found below the SATA ports. Expansion slots include 5 PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, 4 of which have been spaced out correctly for graphics card use. These are the yellow slots. One really cool thing about this motherboard is that there are two M.2 slots. Once is an Ultra M.2 slot (x4) while the other is just a normal slot. On the left side of the board we can also spot a Mini PCI-Express slot. ASRock makes use of their Purity Sound 2 chip on this board. It features PCB isolation and EMI shielding. I/O ports on the board include six USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, PS/2 port, 2 Gigabit LAN ports and 7.1 channel audio.

ASRock Fatal1ty X99 Professional (full details)
ASRock Fatal1ty X99 Professional

The Fatal1ty X99 Professional motherboard features the same black and red color scheme that ASRock has used on their Fatal1ty motherboards in the past. Surrounding the LGA 2011-3 socket are 4 DDR4 DIMM slots on each side. They are color-coded for quad-channel operation. The board features a powerful 12 phase VRM and gets power by way of an 8pin EPS connector and there is an extra 4pin connector to bring even more juice to the CPU. To right side of the memory slots you have plus and minus buttons for BCLK adjustments, a menu button that will bring you into the BIOS directly, PCI-Express dip-switches, LN2 mode switch, slow mode switch and voltage checkpoints. Below that we have the 24pin ATX power connector and dual USB 3.0 headers.

Moving down to the storage we have 10 SATA 6GB/s ports. Below that towards the bottom of the board we can also spot a debug LED and power and rest buttons. There are five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. Four of them have been arranged for perfect video card use, those are the red slots. Interestingly enough this board features not one, but two M.2 slots. One of the M.2 slots is a Ultra M.2 slot (x4 speeds). On the left side of the board we can also spot a mini PCI-Express slot for a WiFi+BT card.

The Fatal1ty X99 Professional will also feature ASRock’s Purity Sound 2 audio chip that has EMI shielding and PCB isolation. Since this board is geared towards gaming you also will have the Killer E2200 LAN chip, Fatal1ty gaming ports and ASRock’s gaming Armor.

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