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
ASRock X79 Extreme11
To conclude, it is hard to judge a motherboard like the ASRock X79 Extreme11. With no other major competing products offering similar functionality, ASRock can charge a pretty penny for the product. However, does it still retain the usefulness or bang for buck in terms of performance?
For your $600 of green, the main selling point is the X79 platform mixed with two PLX PEX 8747 chips which allow four PCIe devices to be run at x16/x16/x16/x16 in PCIe 3.0 or up to seven devices to be run at x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 also in PCIe 3.0. This combination leaves eight PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU, which are directed straight into an LSI SAS 2308 PCIe 3.0 RAID controller. This LSI chip gives eight ports capable of SAS2/SATA 6 Gbps speeds, in RAID 0, 1 or 10 configurations. An equivalent PCIe 3.0 card would set a user back several hundred as well as taking up a PCIe slot.
On top of the PLX and LSI chips, we also get a full-bodied X79 motherboard, featuring eight memory slots, dual Broadcom NIC capable of Teaming/Link Aggregation, a Creative Core3D sound chip, enhanced power delivery, and eight USB 3.0 ports via TI controllers. Software comes in the XFast flavors, with XFast RAM taking advantage of the ability of X79 to hold more memory. The board itself is also supports a multitude of Xeon processors, as well as ECC memory with the Xeons. There is a good amount in the box too, such as six SATA cables and a USB 3.0 panel, but it should be noted that this internal bundle is similar to cheaper ASRock products. The only thing missing in my opinion would be a WiFi connection on the IO, similar to that done by ECS.
Performance wise, the X79 Extreme11 does not win many accolades. It performs similarly or worse than other X79 motherboards in the market - in our GPU testing, the board continuously came near the bottom. The separation ASRock likes to make with the X79 Extreme11 is the PCIe functionality and the ability to include SAS drives on board - the speed of the extra ports reached a staggering 4.0 GBps, even though that may not be a realistic use scenario. The extra ports also are a little hampered by not having additional cache to help with writing short transfer sizes like on a PCIe card.
With our testing, and the price range of this motherboard, it is safe to say that this product is more aimed at workstation projects, such as an 8-core Xeon with ECC, rather than a product for gamers or overclockers. Tool it up with eight SAS drives, seven single slot GPUs, and away you go with a nice number crunching machine. Instead of paying in terms of price for performance, we are all talking about price for functionality here.
As a technical exercise, what ASRock have done is pretty amazing. In terms of pure innovation in a relatively stagnant market, I have to award the ASRock X79 Extreme11 a bronze award for pushing boundaries and enabling innovation in the motherboard market. This motherboard, paired with a deep wallet, could be a number crunching machine for video or audio enthusiasts, or GPU crunchers who yearn PCIe bandwidth but also SAS compatibility. This is strictly an enthusiast’s motherboard.
ASRock X79 Extreme11
AnandTech Editor’s Choice Bronze Award
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Azethoth - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
"a SAS". "an" is for words starting with vowels like "an error", "a" is for words starting with consonants like "a Serial Attached SCSI" or "a Storage Area Network" or "a SAS"*. It rolls off the tongue better when you don't have adjacent vowels.*Your particular English implementation may have different rules, these were the ones I grew up with. I find them simple and easy to apply.
lukarak - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
That's not entirely true.It would be an 'a' if you read it as 'a sas'. But with SAS, we usually pronounce it as S A S, and then it goes with 'an'.
ahar - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Who's "we"? It doesn't include me. Why use three syllables when one will do?Do you also talk about R A M, or R A I D arrays, or an L A N?
Death666Angel - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Like lukarak said, that is not true. The English language uses "an", when the word following it starts with a vowel sound. That doesn't necessarily mean it has a vowel as the first character (see hour).As for abbreviations, there is no rule for it. Some people pronounce them like a single word, others don't. I use LAN, RAM, RAID as a word, but pronounce SAS as S.A.S. and SATA as S.ATA for example and SNES as S.NES. You can't appease both groups. So I think the writer of the article should go with whatever he feels most comfortable with, so that he avoids flipping between things unconsciously.
Death666Angel - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
"If you believe the leaks/news online about an upcoming single slot GTX670, or want to purchase several single slot FirePro cards, then the ASRock will give you all that bandwidth as long as the user handles the heat."I'd probably slap some water coolers on there. Insane setup :D.
tynopik - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
Is it even confirmed that this Ivy Bridge-E is coming out?shunya901 - Monday, September 3, 2012 - link
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ypsylon - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
But little is delivered.1. Primitive RAID option. Without even small cache it is as useful as Intel Storage Matrix RAID. Of course for R 1/10 parity calculations are not required so lack of XOR chip isn't an issue, but believe me even 128 MB of cache would improve performance greatly.
2. They bolted 8 SATA/SAS ports to the board instead using standard server oriented SFF-8087 connector. You get one cable running 4 drives not 4 separate cables for each separate drive. Very clumsy solution. And very, very cheap. Exactly what I expect of ASR.
3. If someone wants RAID buy a proper hardware controller, even for simple setups of R1/10 - plenty of choice on the market. When you change the board in the future you just unplug controller from old board and plug it into new one. No configuration is needed, all arrays remain the same. Idea of running RAID off the motherboard is truly hilarious, especially if somebody change boards every year or two.
4. Fan on south bridge (or the only bridge as north bridge is in the CPU now? ;) ). Have mercy!
5. They pretend it is WS oriented board yet they equip it with lame Broadcom NICs. Completely clueless, that kind of inept reasoning is really typical of ASRock.
6.And finally why persist with ATX. At least E-ATX would be better choice. Spacing some elements wouldn't hurt. Especially with 7 full PCI-Ex slots. Impossible to replace RAM when top slot is occupied, and with really big VGAs it really is tight squeeze between CPU, RAM and VGA. Why not drop top slot to allow air to circulate. Without proper cooling in the case there will be a pocket of hot air which will never move.
To sum up. Bloody expensive, dumb implementation of certain things, and cheaply made. Like 99% of ASRock products. Cheap Chinese fake dressed like Rolls-Royce. In short:stay away.
dgingeri - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
1. Many server manufacturers equip their small business servers with a low end chip like that because of cost. Small businesses, like those who would build their own workstation class machines, have to deal with a limited budget. This works for this market space.2. I don't see any sign of a SFF-8087 port or cable. I see only SATA ports. Honestly, I would have preferred a SFF-8087 port/cable, as my Dell H200 in my Poweredge T110 II uses. It would take up less real estate on the board and be more manageable. I know this from experience.
3. Yeah, the Dell H200 (or it's replacement H310) has plenty of ports (8) and runs <$200 yet any hardware raid controller with a cache would run $400 for 4 ports or about $600 for 8. (I have a 3ware 9750 in my main machine that ran me $600.) Depending on your target market, cost could matter. They get what they can with the budget they have.
4. I'd have to agree with you on the fan, but there's also the little matter of keeping clearance for the video cards top populate the slots. Take off the decorative plate and make the heatsink bigger, and they could probably do without the fan. Unfortunately, there are lots of stupid people out there who buy things on looks rather than capability.
5. Broadcom NICs are vastly superior to the Realtek or Atheros NICs we usually see on DIY boards. I would be happier to see Intel NICs, but Broadcom is still the second best on the market. I have 2 dual port Broadcom NICs in my Dell T110 II machine (which I use as a VMWare ESXI box to train up for certification and my home server.)They work quite well, as long as you don't use link aggregation.
6. Many people wouldn't be able to afford a case that would handle E-ATX, especially the target market for this board.
For the target market, DIY part time IT guy for a small business trying to make a decent CAD station or graphics workstation, it would work fairly well. I'm just not sure about the reliability factor, which would cost a small business big time. I'd say stay away just on that factor. Do with a little less speed and more reliability if you want to stay in business. Dell makes some nice IB workstations that would be perfectly reliable, but wouldn't be as speedy as a SB-E machine.
08solsticegxp - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link
You have to realize, this board is not a server board. If it was designed for that, I'm sure they would have two sockets. Also, it is much cheaper to add the LSI chip to the board than have it as an add-on card. If it was an add-on card... where do you expect it to go when using 4 Video cards?I think the board is designed very well for what it was intended for. You may want to consider looking at design as it relates to the intended purpose... Not, some other purpose.
I will agree to say I would have liked to see a Raid 5 option on the RAID controller. However, looking at the price of an LSI (who are noted for being a high quality RAID controller) it is pretty pricey when you start getting to the controllers that have RAID 5 as an option.