ASUS X99-A Motherboard Review

ASUS X99-A In The Box

So far from our X99 motherboard bundles it has been rather reassuring that for the high initial cost of the parts that the manufacturers are willing to bundle enough to focus on gaming and storage. The ASUS X99-Deluxe did this with a couple of M.2 additions, a protective cover for the left hand side of the board and a bundled fan extension PCB. However the inclusions in the box from ASUS in the X99-A might come across as pricing down to a point. We get the following:

Driver CD
User Manuals
Rear Panel
Four SATA Cables
Q-Connectors
Flexi SLI Bridge

Despite there being a focus on three-way GPU configurations, only one SLI bridge is provided. Having the right size for three-way would be a help here. Four SATA cables is two fewer than almost all other X99 boards as well - this should satisfy most users trying to use X99 on the cheap.

Many thanks to...

We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:

Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs and SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the NVIDIA GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.

Test Setup

ASUS X99-A Overclocking

Experience with ASUS X99-A

ASUS' overclocking options derive mostly from the AI Suite 3 software as part of the 5-Way Optimization tool. The software will find an overclock with appropriate stress tests for an automatic setting, or the user can manipulate the TPU or Turbo App software manually. For automatic overclocking a user can also adjust the TPU DIP switch on the motherboard itself. This switch gives 39x100 and 31x125 for setting one and two respectively. Manual overclocking is best performed through the BIOS which offers ASUS' usual extensive array of options.

Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclock Results