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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puppies - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
22 USB drinks coolers for the crate of redbull you consume while doing an all night rendering session?08solsticegxp - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
You can also use all those ports for USB rocket launchers to be warlord of the office.bobsmith1492 - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
I regularly use up all my USB ports at work and have to use a hub. I'd love to have 22.Mouse
Keyboard
Software key dongle
Flash drive
External hard drive
Multiple USB-to-serial converters
Dev kit
Programmer
martyrant - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Why are you using a software key dongle?Your IT team should be able to produce a software license server, removing the need for USB keys.
Multiple USB-to-serial converters? Are you serious? They have dongles for at least 4 of these from one USB slot, I've got at least 4 x2 slots lying around.
jigglywiggly - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
ppl here whine too muchgr8 review
:D
Performance Fanboi - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
...but a $600 board should include Intel nics over Broadcom.Iketh - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
It is very hard for me to read an article that refers to a company as plural. I have to pause every time i come to "ASRock have..." because it's so unnatural to read since it should be "ASRock has..."While I'm on the subject, I don't know which is correct... "an SAS" or "a SAS" ? I read "SAS" as a word so "an" is incorrect, but if you read it saying each letter, then "a" is right...
Iketh - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
-- , then "a" is right... --should be
-- , then "an" is right... --
ggathagan - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
The British writing convention is to refer to companies in the plural.Sufo - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Well, a company is a group of people is it not? Rather than one single hive-mind. "ASRock" as a singular entity is simply a brand, and I don't like the idea that an abstract concept can make human decisions - technically, because it is impossible, but mainly because it is creepy... :/