ASUS X79 Sabertooth TUF Series Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,739 words · ~8 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of a surprisingly heavy motherboard the Sabertooth x79 has
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an extremely heavy box and I'm not 100%
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sure oh man oops I wonder what that is
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uh I'm not 100% sure why that would be but let's get into this board so it has
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it is a tough series board TUF the Ultimate Force Series board with a 5year
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warant guarantee guaranteed reliability terms and conditions May apply um PCI
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Express 3.0 compatibility this is an x79
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board which means it is compatible with all of Intel's latest LGA 2011
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processors it is compatible with Crossfire X and SLI and when we open it
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up we'll find a bunch of cool stuff so we've got thermal armor total air flow
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boosting heat dissipation so that is uh the cooler okay thermal radar real time
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temp detection and heat removal oh okay so okay monitors
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temperatures and critical parts of the motherboard in real time automatically adjusting fan speeds to make sure the
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main system maintains High stability without overheating oh that's kind of
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neat automatically calculates ideal fan speeds based on different parameters
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selected by users for each component keeping everything cooler and longer lasting neat new Digi plus power control
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so this is something that they implemented on x79 is an allnew Digi
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plus power control so that is digital power control for both the CPU and the
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dam very cool tough components s certified by military standard okay
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robust chokes capacitors and mosfet certified through third party military
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grade testing oh their SSD caching is supported so if you don't have an ocz
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synapse drive and if you don't have a z68 chipset to use in SRT you can use
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this on ausus x79 boards that support this feature usb3 boost allows you to
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use devices with uasp that is a faster way of interfacing with usb3 drives
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finally USB BIOS flashback which is the
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smartest thing that I've pretty much ever seen on a motherboard ever because
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it allows you without any components installed that is no CPU and no RAM
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installed to flash the BIOS just using a
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USB drive with the BIOS file loaded on it holy smokes right that means if Intel
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releases a new CPU and we have old inventory in our warehouse at NC and we
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ship you the new CPU that the board doesn't support yet and the old
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inventory board which is the same board but just with a different firmware
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revision and you plug it in and it doesn't work you go oh no my system's
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DOA and then ASUS says oh no there's a firmware update there's a BIOS update
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and then you go well I don't have another CPU now it no longer matters
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that's so cool cuz it means it's reducing end User rmas it's reducing end
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user Hassle and it's better for the retailers and the manufacturers
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everybody wins with that feature very cool CPU installation guide cool tough
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stickers IO Shield user guide including
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a useless DVD inside which you should download the latest off the ASUS website
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tough series motherboard 5year warranty notice as well as a certificate of
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reliability included accessories are
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four SATA 36 GB per second cables two SATA 3 6 G SATA 2 3 gbit per second
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cables uh front Q connectors a
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fan which probably go somewhere and an
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SLI connector that is a very short SLI bridge I have a feeling I'm not going to
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like the PCI Express slot spacing on this board um I mean the reality of it
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is 99% of people still are not using
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dual graphics cards even when they buy high-end boards so you know I'm not
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going to get my panties too much in a not about it but you know how it is see
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that's funny why would they do that oh okay I guess that's okay why does this
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looks so short to me okay never mind it's okay that's fine that's uh that's
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that's definitely adequate spacing all right so this is looking like a pretty
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slick little board here why don't we go ahead and take these stickers off I
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already talked about all those things except the UEFI bio does have a UEFI
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BIOS which just means it's a graphical user interface you can use your mouse
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rather than just uh the keyboard to navigate it and let's start on the back
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cuz I felt something interesting back there yes we have a heat sink on the vrm
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components on the back of the board we've also got our standard LGA 2011
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back plate which makes it much much easier for manufacturers to design
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awesome aftermarket cooling solutions for this board that are going to be
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retained in a way that is not going to have them fall off and put adequate
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mounting pressure onto the CPU I love seeing that back plate built in it's a
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higher quality decision thank you Intel notus that was Intel um right right
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right on that note okay uh oh you know what it's too far away but something to
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consider if you're buying an x79 board is you might want to think about getting
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a case such as the antech 1100 which has a fan on the back that will allow you to
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actively cool these components on the back of the board as well as the back of
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the PCB itself because a lot of heat radiates out of the back of a mother
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board PCB so now let's have a look at the overall layout so you got your LGA
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2011 socket ASUS much to their pride has
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implemented 8 dim slots on all of their x79 boards and kudos to them because
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they have gone with the full x79 solution rather than just putting on
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four dim slots which is still quad Channel by the way I've had people
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complain about x79 boards um including this one I think there's a comment on
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the video for this board right here saying oh why only dual Channel memory
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on an x79 board it's not dual Channel memory it's quad Channel memory four
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dims quad Channel memory um it's just
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whether or not you can actually put two dims per Channel okay guys so this one
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supports two dims for channel eight dims total I don't have that many fingers um
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for up to 64 gigs of memory using currently available stuff very neat
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eight pin connector and its ideal location along the top left edge of the
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board we've got a pretty good looking cooler over here but the key part is
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this heat pipe right here which leads to an even better cooler
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over here so there's a fan which can be installed by taking out those screws and
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putting in the fan here which is going to give you better cooling for your vrm
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components and I would highly recommend installing that because this is a very
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limited amount of space to cool the voltage or the power delivery circuitry
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for a very power hungry CPU we've got a memo K button which allows you to boot
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with pretty much any memory off the Hop as long as it's functional 24 pin
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connector in its ideal location front USB 3 header in its ideal location I've
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started calling that that we've got all the Intel SATA ports so these are your
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SATA 36 GB per second ports there's your 4 SATA 2 3 GB per second ports as well
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as running off a third party Marvel controller these are the ones that
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support SSD caching so that's where You' plug your SSD and your hard drive into
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and those are also SATA 3 6 gbit per second let's go ahead and move over here
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there's your front panel ports there's your clear seimos although I hope there's one on the back panel yes there
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no there is not yes there no there is
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not fascinating okay uh well there's your clear
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cosos huh there isn't another one okay uh there's your front usb2 four of those
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also got your front panel audio and then your PCI Express slot layout so yeah
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like I said this is not what I thought it was it's okay I thought it was 1 two
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3 but actually it's one 2 3 4 and then
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the other one there's one more space so if you did want to do a three-way configuration this is probably not the
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ideal board for it because those ones would have the tighter space but this
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one is best optimized for two I also see
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their uh their TPU so what that means is that this board supports their automated
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overclocking which if you check out on my ncixcom channel their automated
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overclocking utility absolutely blows away the competitor's overclocking
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utilities with the uh one button setup
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blows away their competitor's one button overclocking utilities because it
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achieved a much higher overclock and it was still stable um what else we got here 16x 16x
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8x in case you guys were wondering one PCI slot although I don't really know
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what that's doing on such a high-end board two PCI e1x slots and let's have a
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look at what we got for Io on the back here we go we got a PS2 keyboard mouse
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combo Port I still like seeing these they are still handy 1 2 3 4 USB 3.0
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ports 1 2 3 4 5 USB 2.0 ports a fire
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wire Port e that's powered eat that's regular e SATA we've got optical audio
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out as well as the USB flashback Port right there gigabit Ethernet and 7.1
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audio out so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the tough
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series x79 saber-tooth board from ASUS and don't forget to subscribe to Linus
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