Introduction

Several months have passed since I've posted a motherboard review, and it hasn't been because of a lack of boards. Over the weeks that have gone by, I've been busy with school while recovering from a recent car accident, and unfortunately, I've personally felt that many of the boards I had been provided with did not have BIOSes ready for the end user. All three of those points had me hesitate when it came time to post reviews. While explaining this to the board makers wasn't an easy task, it also wasn't really well-received either. In the time that has passed, quite a few things have changed on Intel's X99 Express platform, and in such a way that the time has come to stop putting these reviews off, so if a board fails, it fails. The time for BIOS optimizations has passed. Yet not every board I received before or right after the platform launch in late August failed to meet my expectations.

ASRock has been one of those companies with a mixed reputation. You can find some users who complain about bad experiences, although those with issues are obviously going to speak up to look for help, while those happy with their purchase are likely to say nothing at all. To me, this means that there is quite a large user base out there with ASRock boards in their rigs, and they MUST be happy with them. Having had many of ASRock's products myself, I can easily see how many users wouldn't say very much; ASRock provides affordable and functional products in a wide variety of colors, with a wide variety in functionality. Many other board makers do the same, but not all are as affordable, nor are all of them capable of putting out quite as interesting an engineering showcase.

Engineering showcase? Yes, when it comes to ASRock, that's the idea that springs to my mind immediately, and for the Intel X99 Express platform, the first ASRock product I'm going to show you is exactly that. ASRock has been releasing "Extreme 11" boards for many generations now, fitted with a huge whack of PCIe expansion options and featuring a built-in LSI RAID card, attached right to the board's PCB like it's no big deal. The board then offers the end user a ton of SATA ports and drive capabilities that cannot be matched by any other product out there, not right off the shelf. Want to plug in 20 drives, in a variety of flavors? The ASRock X99 Extreme11 will do that with no additional hardware, and guess what? It can overclock like mad, too. How about performance? Well, let's take a look.

Specifications