Picking the Best X79 Motherboard

When we set up forth to exam five new loftier-end X79 motherboards, we expected to see a lot of similarities betwixt them, even so no two boards shared the aforementioned price tag, and the range varied as much as $100 among them. With than in heed, we'll break down each motherboard individually before wrapping things up.

Starting with the almost affordable of the grouping, the Intel DX79SI ($280) offers a basic X79 platform to work with. The run-of-the-manufacturing plant Realtek audio is used, there are four USB 3.0 ports, merely Firewire is offered and users get a pair of quality Intel Ethernet controllers. Likewise those highlights, everything else is standard and tin can be plant on all other X79 motherboards.

The DX79SI is a high quality board, performs well, offers low power consumption and operates at a reasonable temperature. The merely weakness nosotros discovered was the limited overclocking performance, which saw us hit a wall at 4269MHz. The lack of a UEFI BIOS was disappointing and as a outcome the DX79SI felt more dated than the competition.

The MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) is an actress $20, and for that money you receive two additional SATA 6Gb/s ports, while 1 of the Intel Ethernet controllers is dropped. The MSI board receives a UEFI BIOS which gives it a more polished feel when compared to the DX79SI, however the overclocking functioning was quite poor.

Moving upwardly the food chain we take the ECS X79R-AX for $310. This board provides improve overclocking than both the Intel and MSI competition, though it'south considerably more ability hungry. Y'all can too expect significantly more than features, every bit the lath features twice as many SATA ports, more USB 3.0 ports, eSATA, wireless networking and Bluetooth.

The downside to the ECS X79R-AX is design, which often feels cheap, particularly for a motherboard this expensive. It's also the only lath with four DIMM slots rather than the full eight. It'southward hard to say if I would purchase the ECS motherboard over Intel's, but if I were going to, ECS' offering does trump MSI.

And withal, the board that made the most complete argument was the Asrock X79 Extreme9. At $345 it might be a tad expensive, simply we think information technology's worth it. The X79 Extreme9 is the most feature rich board included in our roundup and it provided the best overclocking results. The build quality is excellent and the board itself looks impressive.

The Asus P9X79 Deluxe is also a worthwhile choice, as it was like to the Asrock X79 Extreme9 in terms of features and overclocking abilities. That said, information technology's more expensive ($380) and the Asrock board offers more features and better quality audio.

Bottom line, the Asrock X79 Extreme9 delivered the best loftier-end reasonably priced X79 motherboard. The ECS X79R-AX would appear to exist a close second in terms of value, but there is too picayune separating the two, and if yous are going to be looking at value, you may as well get for the Intel board if you don't mind the more than pocket-size feature set and lack of UEFI BIOS.