Comments Locked

40 Comments

Back to Article

  • nathanddrews - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    That's very impressive from a hardware perspective, but it seems like a jack of all trades and a master of none for a staggering price. If money were no object, I'd be all over it! :D
  • Samus - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    The thing is Asrock isn't a name that comes to mind when building a mission-critical storage server...normally I'd lean toward Supermicro or Asus.

    But with Foxconn as the manufacture of most OEM boards (historically including Intel's own server platforms) I'd probably pick an Asrock platform over Foxconn simply from a support/engineering stance.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    I don't think the ASRock name is the issue, it's just the mobo overall that seems like it's trying to be too many things at once. I'm trying to think of a use case for something like this and all I can really come up with is if you wanted to combine a media server, mini-cloud gaming server, run VMs, and do raw 4K editing... but then if I wanted to do all of that, I would probably lean toward a dual-CPU setup. If you're already spending 20K on a computer, what's another 3K?
  • nunya112 - Sunday, October 12, 2014 - link

    no way Asrock board are terrible quality. sure they have been getting all the OC records etc lately. but those boards are thrown away after that. they don't last.
    The PCB's are paper thin. they actually creek and flex when you install DRAM! and not a little bit. I thought I broke the board the last time I installed ram in a asrock!

    Having said that I am running a asrock mobo in my parents low end system. its alright for $50 mobo. but when you get into the Z97 and X99 series. you would expect higher quality and its not there. it stays at that $50 low end. just with high end parts slapped on. where for the same cash. you can get better power. thicker PCB's copper shielded ones. backup Bioses. seperated audio channels on their own dedicated PCB's
    As rock does none of these things well. Buyer BEWARE . if they started releasing quality. I would be praising them. I am not a fanboi. Igo with what's good at the time. and atm Asus is midrange no matter the model. asus has been left behind by MSI and then Gigabyte in that order. MSI has some great boards. but they are dearer than the gigabytes and have less features or cut down features. such as the PWM's and phases etc
  • Akrovah - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link

    I don't know, so far I am lovign my Z97 Extreme6. The dual bios works very well, nice easy flip of a switch. The in BIOS upgrade going out to the net and getting an updated version without ever having to load an OS works perfectly.

    And I was more worried about snapping the merely glued on heat spreader off my memory than i was about MoBo flex. I didn't notice any of the flex you mention at all. Considering the bevy of features in the Extreme6 and rock solid stability of my system since the build (granted, only thre weeks ago) I'd actually call ASRock's boards some pretty good value in the mid $100 range.

    Only issue I seem to be having is that Chassis fan #1 seems stuck at 100% no matter what I set it to, but I consider that fairly minor and I got some fairly quiet fans anyway.
  • This Guy - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link

    Asrock uses the same parts and manufacturing plants as all the other brands. Your 'flaws' are marketing fluff.

    Some motherboards skip a mounting hole that's normally to the bottom left of the RAM. Other companies do this too. I normally notice more flex mounting stock Intel coolers. Notice how when it bent, it didn't crack? PCBs are normally Copper and Fibreglass, both can flex more than you'd think.

    "Better power?" Power has been on-board since Haswell. '8 phases' just means they used more low power chips, or they went overkill on the power system. If the power design was rubbish, the computer would constantly freeze. And Asrock would not hold any OC records.

    "Thicker PCB's copper shielded ones?" If trace size and shielding was a problem, the motherboard would not work. CPUs are generally digital. And they definitely wouldn't OC.

    "Backup BIOS." Many mainstream boards have moved to storing multiple BIOS configurations. You blow CPU's when overclocking, not BIOS chips.

    "Separated audio channels." Most mainstream speakers produce significantly more noise than an old-school audio design. An op amp is useful if you have high impedance headphones.

    Mainstream motherboards are more than enough for most people. Unless you need a feature, your money is better saved. I have a stable 4.4GHz OC with ~3kg hanging off a 'middle range' $150 Asrock motherboard running 24/7 for the last year.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link

    So, 4 phase motherboards don't have more droop and more trouble maintaining high overclocks than motherboards with more phases and other fancier power regulation features? The two 4 phase Gigabyte motherboards (P35-DS3L, P55-UD4P) I have had have both had tremendous droop. The latter motherboard also came with the defective Foxconn socket for good measure.
  • jwcalla - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    At least they got smart by providing ECC support. I didn't realize the X99 chipset had that.
  • dgingeri - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    That is not exactly in the chipset. It's in the CPU.

    However, Intel does restrict certain things artificially based on the chipset used. In the case of the X79 and X99, they have not chosen to implement a block against ECC or registered memory functionality. Technically, it has been available since SB-EP. Nobody has used it, though.
  • x99-a - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link

    I am not sure if dgingeri is still around as this is a super old thread but it seems like you're on top of this ecc functionality, on amd am3 there's extreme compatibility, it all depends on the cpu whether or not you get ecc, you can buy a $50 motherboard with a crappy chipset but as long as your cpu supports ecc you can stick it in the motherboard and get the functionality.

    So my question is do all x99 motherboards from all manufacturers support ecc? (even though almost all manufacturers say they don't and that you need to buy the 'workstation' x99 motherboard, I am thinking asus x99-a specifically.)
  • ZeDestructor - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    So does the Asus X99-E WS. They added the ECC QVL a short while ago :)
  • Kougar - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    I'm really confused, why are the PCIe 3.0 x4 connected M.2 slots only rated for ~350MB when the interface is capable of almost 4GB/s? My understanding was the M.2 interface maxed out at 1.2GB/s.
  • extide - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    I am thinking 2.8GB a sec is 2.8Gbytes a sec not Gbit a sec. Otherwise, yeah, it wouldn't make sense.

    M.2 isn't really an interface, it's a connector, so it's b/w is entirely dependant on the actual interface used under the hood, and it supports many different configurations.
  • Kougar - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    Okay, that would make much more sense. So does the board support NVMe on M.2, I assume it would since it's an actual PCIe connection?
  • erikb5 - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link

    Because each M.2 is associated with a single SATA3 port.

    Look at the Manual on Page 27.
    "If the Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_1) has been occupied, the internal S_SATA3_2 will not function. If the Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_2) has been occupied, the internal S_SATA3_0 will not function."

    Page 46
    "Please be noted that the M2_1 is shared with the S_SATA3_2 connector, and the S_SATA3_0 connector is shared with the M2_2.
    * If you install CPU with 28 lanes, the PCIE function of M2_2 will be disabled."
  • erikb5 - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link

    Extra reading on the PLX PEX8747 the plxtech dot com page.
    http://www.plxtech.com/products/expresslane/pex874...

    The two PLX PEX8747 switches transform two x16 flows into a single x16 flow.

    So a 4 SLI config is a Switched x16/x16 + Switched x16/x16 and + 8 PCIe lanes for storage + audio.
  • Omoronovo - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link

    Hi,

    When running in Sata mode with sata-based m.2 SSD's, the ports act like slower sata 3 ports; hence 350MB/s. The slower throughput is due to the unfortunate way they have configured the sata lanes on m.2 slots, but in my opinion this is excusable as they have obviously focused the M.2 ports to be used with PCIE-based drives.

    As seen from the video, with both M.2 ports fitted with pcie-based SSD's (XPI941's from Samsung), they aggregate 2.8GB/s (GB, not Gb) of bandwidth. They benchmark a hodgepodge of SSD's from the 18 sata ports which manages 7.8GB/s.
  • danjw - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    I guess if you only have 1 system for both workstation and file server it might work for you. Otherwise, I think I would prefer the Asus Z10PAD8 for a file server. It support the LSI PIKE II cards and comes in $200 less and is a close to a standard ATX form factor with only 10" of depth. So, it should fit in a much wider range of cases.
  • dgingeri - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    If someone wanted to build a VM host for their own personal training using cheap drives left over from numerous upgrades over the years, this would be a good board for it. It would have the slots for plenty of network I/O, even 10Gb. The storage controllers built into it would be good for plenty of drives. The memory capacity and processor could host many small VMs. On top of all that, it could double as a gaming machine with a couple GPUs.
  • traest - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    What kind of a case would you put a motherboard like this in (that would handle 18 hard drives)?
  • dgingeri - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    8 ports to a SFF-8087 breakout cable, a pair SFF-8087 internal connection to SFF-8088 enternal connection adapters, two SFF-8088 external SAS cables, and an external SAS enclosure for 8 drives using SFF-8088 connections.
  • dgingeri - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    ...or get 4 Thermaltake MAX-1542 host swap drive bay adapters (http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Backplane-Remova... to house 16 2.5" drives in 4 5.25" drive bays.
  • Bob Todd - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    This would be awesome in my PC-D8000.

    http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-d8000/

    My wife wouldn't be as enthusiastic about a ~$600 motherboard as I would be, or the several grand in components that I'd want to fill it with...

    BTW, nice title Ian!
  • bill.rookard - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    Something along the lines of a 3u or 4u rackmount storage server which has anywhere from 16-24 hotswap bays. Supermicro makes several that fit the bill... heck, I have a 2u at home which has 8 hotswap bays + a sata DVD and I've run out of sata ports already (the mobo only has 6...)
  • bill.rookard - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    That is just... well... crazy. But I like it. I wonder if they did a cost comparison of developing two different versions of this board - a 'video board' if you will (with 4 gpu crossfire/sli) with minimal storage (6 or less SATA) and a 'storage board' with minimal video (1 gpu pci-e x16) and the crazy storage capabilities and found this to be the best way (one monster board) from a cost perspective.

    Think about it, 18 of the newer 6tb drives would be close to 120TB of storage. In. Sane.
  • dgingeri - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    ...or, using 16 1TB 5400rpm laptop drives to get 16TB of storage space for under 30W of power.
  • dilidolo - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    If I want to build a storage server, I would use Supermicro motherboard.
    X10SRH-CF or X10SRH-CLN4F(quad Intel i350 Nic) with remote management. Both below $400.
  • genzai - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    looks awesome. But no thunderbolt header = no sale. bummer.
  • defaultPlayer - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    I'm probably one of the few that uses the ASRock Z87 Extreme11 but there is a niche usage case for their Extreme11 series boards. Mine combines 3 into 1 for gaming, media server, and a VM box with all 22 SATA ports used and 2-way SLI. I could see someone building a similar system with this new X99 Extreme11 except going heavier on graphics with 4-way SLI at full x16. I won't be upgrading mine until Skylake-E with Sunrise Point so I'll be looking forward to see what ASRock has in store for the Extreme11 series when that time comes...
  • Mikemk - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link

    I can think of a use case for this. Get a bootable M.2, and 18 850 pro SSDs in RAID 10. You will then get massive read/write speeds, and incredibly high IOPS
  • snakyjake - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link

    This is exactly what I want to build my personal storage server.
  • it-man - Saturday, October 11, 2014 - link

    By dr dre or iMOBO
  • mapesdhs - Saturday, October 11, 2014 - link

    Small note Ian, Asrock's page states the LSI controller supports 1E and 10 aswell as 0/1.

    Btw, do you know if the controller has any included cache RAM? Not having any can
    really harm 4K performance through SAS controllers. Really needs to be at least 1GB
    for so many ports.

    Ian.
  • Ian Cutress - Saturday, October 11, 2014 - link

    Yeah, it's the same controller as previous Extreme11 models, so 1E and 10 are also there (almost everything that supports 0/1 supports 10). It doesn't have any cache RAM, either because the controller doesn't support it or because they can't buy enough to get pricing to be favorable.
  • mapesdhs - Monday, October 13, 2014 - link


    That's a real shame. :\

    It's easy to get good sequential I/O rates with a SAS controller using large block sizes,
    but without the cache the performance for random I/O at small sizes is very limited by
    the controller IOPS in the absence of any cache. I've tested various older SAS cards,
    up to a P410; once some cache was included, random I/O reached 2GB/sec, and
    one could see performance drop off exactly as one would expect once the request
    size meant it couldn't fit in the cache.

    Hence, unless one's task is aptly served by a no-cache controller, it'd be much more
    effective to get something like the ASUS X99E-WS and use a separate SAS card
    with cache.

    One other thing, am I right in assuming the 128GB RAM capacity is only possible
    with a XEON installed? Intel's specs pages state HW-E's max RAM is 64GB.

    Ian.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link

    Correct - 128GB of DRAM with RDIMMs and Xeon. There is a company that makes 16GB DDR3 UDIMMs, but they are not on general sale and work for a limited number of Intel CPUs. As far as we know, no 16GB UDIMM DDR4 modules are on the market. Not sure if that company are investing in DDR4 though. But I suspect in time we will see them from the main DRAM manufacturers, and we'll have to see what the support is like then.
  • mapesdhs - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link

    I had been hoping HW-E would finally move max RAM to at least 128GB, but alas not.
    This makes it difficult for some solo pros I know working with apps like AE, moving up
    to 4K, who really want more than 64GB but can't afford XEON systems. I think Intel is
    missing a market opportunity here; with the 64GB limit persisting, it just means some
    people can't buy anything that makes sense or is affordable.

    Perhaps a higher limit with BW-E or whatever is coming next?

    Ian.
  • nunya112 - Sunday, October 12, 2014 - link

    when you get into the Z97 and X99 series. you would expect higher quality and its not there. it stays at that $50 low end. just with high end parts slapped on. where for the same cash. you can get better power. thicker PCB's copper shielded ones. backup Bioses. seperated audio channels on their own dedicated PCB's
    As rock does none of these things well. Buyer BEWARE . if they started releasing quality. I would be praising them. I am not a fanboi. Igo with what's good at the time. and atm Asus is midrange no matter the model. asus has been left behind by MSI and then Gigabyte in that order. MSI has some great boards. but they are dearer than the gigabytes and have less features or cut down features. such as the PWM's and phases etc
  • mapesdhs - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link


    I guess you've forgotten, their X58 Extreme6 was one of *the* most popular X58 boards
    for its time, loads of review sites used it for X58 CPU reviews, and GPU reviews of the day.

    And my experiences of X79 have been the opposite of what you describe, excellent
    results again and again with the ASUS WS edition, built five of them so far (three 3930K,
    two 3960X). Not low quality at all, quite the contrary. Indeed, the WS is basically the same
    tech as the ROG series, same oc features/potential, but with better support for RAID cards
    & suchlike. I've had numerous Asrock boards in the past, they worked very well, especially
    the P55 Deluxe and indeed the Extreme6. They have a reputation for innovation and unusual
    board features. Personally I wouldn't touch MSI at all, except for their GPUs which I do like
    (I have six of their 3GB 580 LXs).

    Ian.
  • akula2 - Monday, October 20, 2014 - link

    Are you planning to do reviews for Asrock X99 WS and Asus X99-E WS?

    I'm an Asus consumer since 'Supercomputer' board says, but never used Asrock WS boards. I'm kinda stuck because of lack of quality reviews because:

    ~$200 price difference between them
    5690X and Xeon performance
    PCIe limitations on those boards
    DDR4 optimal frequency at CPU Turbo range? E.g., buying 2666Hz makes sense or stick to 2133?

    I've so many unknown questions. And there is:

    Asus OC socket which really makes me uncomfortable
    Asus X99 Deluxe boards and 5960X saga. Does WS board has any issue? I don't know...

    And, another big one is: release of Maxwell based Titan Black II, Quadro and Tesla cards?

    First the first time in many years, I'm not getting enough courage to spend six-digit budget on ten ultra workstation builds (five 5960X and five Xeons based). Perhaps I might push everything to another 4-5 months instead of building them during with the upcoming holiday.

    What do you suggest in my case?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now