Asrock Extreme 11 X79 Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,124 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the ASRock x79 extreme 11 motherboard
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this is pretty much as Extreme as it gets I
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mean they took the dial from 1 to
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10 and cranked it up to
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11 so what's it got going for it this
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I'm not that sold on I don't think it has times the system speed with X fast
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RAM and I don't think the USB is five times the speed of anyone else's USB 3
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although it is five times the speed of USB 2 I don't believe that their Lan is
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five times the speed of anything it's gigabit which is either 10 * 10 100 or
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it's the same as gigabit so uh but what
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it does have is support for core i7 processors on the LGA 2011 platform SLI
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and Crossfire X compatibility Windows 7 or Windows 8 compatibility any new board
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is going to be just fine with Windows 8 you've got dual PCI E3 plx chips yes it
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is that extreme so this board is capable
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of running four-way SLI and four-way Crossfire at 16x 16x 16x 16x Yes you
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heard me correctly four
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pcie3 graphics cards at full
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16xp isn't that crazy and because the
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board is all PCIe 16x connectors they
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can actually run at 16
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888888 I mean if you were going to put like six raid cards in a video card in a
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board this would be the one okay moving
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right along to some other things here before I explain why the packaging is all beat up um 24 plus 2phase power
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design with no coil wine by the way I have already fired up this board and put
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it under load digital power okay 8 by
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DDR3 2500 plus OC although the forms
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indicate that it's kind of hard to do that unless you have like exactly the
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right cherry pick modules and really it comes down to the CPU more than the
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board for things like um 8 dim high-speed memory operation so bear that
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in mind you got to have a good memory controller on your CPU dual stack
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mosfets this is a new thing here so the silicone silicon die area is increased
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by stacking two dyes into a mosfet very cool stuff eight SATA 3/ SAS
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connectors from the LSI controller and creative onboard sound with core 3D
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audio with premium headset amplifier so yes amped onboard sound onboard SAS with
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an LSI controller not Marvel not J Micron nothing like that LSI like the
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real deal um yeah dual PCI E3 plx chips those are
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expensive chips by the way there's no other high-end board that uses more than
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one of them and that's very high-end other boards like this is this is in
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terms of the actual cost to ASRock probably the most expensive possible way
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to implement everything that they've done here this is a premium board no
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jokes uh what else we got here premium gold caps yeah they just like they put
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gold on the Caps just because um 8 by USB 3 four front four back Scout mode
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here the okay sure let's move right on ack
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OMG online management guard Okay Internet Flash oh cool searches for
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available ufi firmware updates from ASRock servers Auto detect the latest
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BIOS from the servers and Flash them within the ufi setup without entering
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the Windows OS that's cool easy raid installer interactive ufi with
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apparently music um okay yeah visual
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BIOS broadcom dual Lan okay that's unfortunate I would have liked to see
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although it does support teaming I would have liked to see Intel Lan however it's
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got so many PCIe slots that you can install as many
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sort of addin cards as you want if if you're going to spend $600 on a
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motherboard I don't think a land card is that much of a stretch so you got a
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front uh USB 3 3 and 1/2 in adapter just
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in case you don't have that built into your case uh short uh U hard PCB SLI
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Bridge um another one three-way SLI Bridge whoops oh wow
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okay Simplicity Simplicity is
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like kind of my favorite thing ever this
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is the best three-way SLI that I have ever
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seen nothing no branding blank branding
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is here which is good but that is going to look so clean in your system love
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it uh 6 SATA 3 6 GB per second cables uh
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another hard Bridge again very clean nothing on the front of it uh here you
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can take this and install it in this and add additional back panel USB 3 if you
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don't want them in the front handy two Molex to SATA power connectors
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it's random if you don't have a power supply with SATA connectors on it and you're buying a $600 board your
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priorities are wrong IO shield colorcoded for
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convenience manual manual okay you got to be kidding me
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okay software setup guide this is a quick installation
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guide download the latest drivers from the ASRock website don't use
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this that's a novel not a quick installation guide that's a full manual
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guys um now let's have a look at the board
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and I will sort of quickly explain why it looks like this this is my cat um I
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have already tried this board I took it out so that I could uh so I could test
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it for coil wine cuz I'm looking for a new build for my personal or a new board
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for my personal rig and uh I was like
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super disappointed when I came back in the room and he had absolutely shredded
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the packaging for it so um hopefully
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that's not going to be a problem for me at any point in time also it was
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strapped in with these but I have already undone them so it was zip tied
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in so that it's going to be totally safe in shipping I'm actually really
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impressed with the way this board is packaged see no possibility for it to go
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anywhere nice soft foam and this is the board so a few things that are unique
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about this board um the engineering that goes into building something this
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extreme should not be understated
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because this is a standard ATX length
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board it's an eatx and that it's a little bit longer but it's not full eatx
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either so as long as you've got a decent case with a little bit of extra width
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this board will fit eight dims seven PCI
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slots cannot emphasize that enough does
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not exist in a standard length board other than this one no one else was able
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to do it and the fact that they had to put in dual plx chips to get so I mean
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no one else even did 16 16 16 16111 or
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anything like that nobody did this and
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they had to build in additional chips in order to make it happen and they have 8
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+ 6 hard drive connections so two SATA 3
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6 GB per second ports off the Intel chipset four SATA 2 3 GB per second
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ports off the Intel chipset and eight SAS 6 gbit per second connections off
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the LSI chipset these are mostly intended for storage guys for your boot
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drive you should still be using the Intel controller all right post debug
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okay I'm getting distracted here because I'm like just on OS truck by the board
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there's your 24 phase power up there you can actually see 12x 2 under this uh
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under this heat sink right here and then this is the one thing that I was not too
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thrilled about with this particular board the fact that it does include a
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chipset fan however my understanding is some water cooling company somewhere
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might be working on a full board cooler for this board which would make it pretty much the perfect board for the
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extreme user because there's no electrical noise and once you get that
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fan off it it should be completely silent with all of these connectivity
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options built into it all right dual a
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pin power connectors in the top left and their ideal locations lots of room
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around the CPU socket for you know large coolers water blocks whatever else the
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case may be eight dim slots which is
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unbelievable given that they've again squeezed it into this tiny form factor
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considering all like I mean look how dense the PCB is like even the top
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corners like yep put in everything you possibly can everywhere like here just
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do like a pen of like here down to the
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bottom how much stuff is on this board like a lot
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of the time you look at premium products and you're like yeah there's really not that much stuff on it like what were
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they spending money on and with this one there is actually no doubt that they
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spent a lot of money on it okay 24 pin power connectors in this ideal location
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along the right hand Edge two USB 3.0 front panel connectors they're not right
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angle but I'll forgive them again they're space constrained at some point I guess on something like this chipset
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cooler okay um and for those of you who are suggesting on my blog channel that I
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just use a simple uh chipset water block I can't do that because there are four
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chips under there see there's the screws plx
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plx one of these is going to be South bridge and then one of them is going to
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be the uh the LSI controller this is
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probably the LSI controller would be my guess hold on where the Trac is going
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now that might be the S uh yeah that's the LSI controller and that's the sth
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bridge as they used to call them and they don't call them anymore but I still
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do cuz I'm old school like that uh onboard power connectors post header or
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post uh readout us print USB connectors
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auxiliary power is here and here so if you really did want to install four
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graphics cards I'd recommend using one or both of those to avoid burning out your 24 pin connector you've got onboard
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fire wire onboard HD audio there's your bigger cap for the onboard audio uh
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headphone amplifier see badge one yeah
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looks kind of neat but I think the Chip's actually under there probably shielded in some way
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Neato okay um I think that pretty much
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covers it other than oh yeah it's got the sexiest color scheme ever I wish it
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had a matte black PCB but since the PCB again is like so covered in stuff that
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you don't see it anyway this would have been just perfect for my build if I
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could get my hands on a on a chipset cooler for it that's not uh not a fan
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the fan actually doesn't turn on until the chipset gets hot but uh the chipset
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got hot pretty fast with all those chips under it so um not to mention it's
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sharing cooling with this guy right here via this heat pipe and the uh Power
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phases are bound to get pretty toasty as well so let's have a look at what we've
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got oh right right right right hold on hold on fan fan connectors one three pin
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one four pin one three pin one three pin
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so that's a total of what three three pins one okay another four pin another
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three pin decent number of fan connectors not
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a ton though and back panel connectors PS2 Port yay still a must in my opinion8
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USB 2.0 ports clear seos dual GB Ethernet fire wire 4 USB 3.0 ports dual
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EA ports it's like Overkill much so that
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gives us a total of what was this 6 8 14
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16 16 SATA connections um optical audio out and 5.1
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audio with a mic input thank you for
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checking out my unboxing and first look at the ASRock extreme 11 x79 motherboard
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