Intel Haswell-E and X99 Chipset Preview

ASUS X99 Motherboards
ASUS ROG Rampage V Extreme (full details)
ASUS ROG Rampage V Extreme Motherboard

Keeping true to form the Rampage V Extreme will have the same black and red color scheme that ASUS uses on all of their Republic of Gamers products. This board does not fit the normal ATX form factor, instead ASUS has gone with the larger E-ATX form factor to fit in all of the features. The board will feature the LGA 2011-3 socket, which is flanked on each side by 4 DDR4 DIMM slots. The board will have an 8 phase DIGI+VRM design, which of course makes use of high quality components.

Along the right side of the motherboard we can see a set of dip switches to turn off your PCI-Express slots, a debug LED, power and reset buttons, MemOK button, BIOS reset button, and LN2 switch. There is also an M.2 slot that runs down from the bottom of the 24pin ATX power connector to the SATA ports. There is also two USB 3.0 headers on the board, one at the center of the board towards the right side and one on the bottom of the board.

For storage on the board you have twelve SATA 6GB/s ports and two SATA Express ports. For expansion you have five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots and an open-end PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slot. The board will feature ASUS’s SupremeFX audio chip that has its own PCB isolation from the rest of the motherboard. The rear I/O of the motherboard includes 10 USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi connectors, 7.1 channel audio, BIOS flashback button and ROG connect button.

Like previous Rampage Extreme models the Rampage V Extreme will ship with ASUS’s OC Panel device. This can be used to easily tune your system in real time and provides quite a lot of overclocking options. Expect this motherboard to have a hefty price tag.

ASUS X99 Deluxe (full details)
ASUS X99 Deluxe

ASUS is going with an all black PCB with which accents throughout the board. There is also a cover over your expansion slots and the Crystal Sound 2 components. The board will have a 12 phase (8 CPU, 4 memory) all digital VRM and of course ASUS will be using quality components here like BlackWing chokes. Surrounding the LGA 2011-3 socket are 8 DD4 DIMM slots (4 on each side). The board gets power by way of the 24pin ATX power connection and 8pin EPS connector.

Expansion slots on the board include four PCI-Express 3.0 x26 slots, one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot (electrical x4) and a PCI-Express 2.0 x4 slot. Storage will include twelve SATA 6GB/s ports, one SATA Express port, and a “standing” M.2 slot with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 physical layer. There are a total of 14 USB 3.0 ports on the board (10 on the rear panel, 4 by headers). For networking there are dual Intel gigabit Ethernet adapters and a 802.11ac WLAN card. The board will also feature ASUS’s Crystal Sound 2 chip that features a high SNR DAC, audio-grade electrolytic capacitors, a headphones amp circuit, and ground-layer isolation.

Along the bottom of the board we can see power and reset switches along with a debug LED. There are four different dip switches, which we assume are for the BIOS, EPU and TPU.

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