Sunday, November 13th 2011
ASUS Ready With X79 Workstation Board
Republic of Gamers and Sabertooth aren't the only special client motherboard product lines of ASUS apart from its mainline, there's also the WS (workstation) series, that consists of motherboards fit for mission-critical environments, and which are filled to the brim with features. These motherboards are often based on chipset from Intel's client product lines, rather than enterprise ones. Intel's Sandy Bridge-E 1P platform will get a similar treatment with the P9X79WS.
Based on the ATX form-factor, the P9X79WS uses a typical X79 motherboard layout. The socket LGA2011 is powered by a 10-phase Digi+ VRM, which is cooled by a heatsink that shares its heat with a VRM heatsink cluster over the memory VRM, and the one over the X79 PCH. There are eight DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting quad-channel DDR3 memory. All expansion slots are PCI-Express long-type, though the exact lane configuration is not known. The board is advertised with 4-way NVIDIA SLI and CrossFireX support, so at least four of those slots could be wired to the CPU.
Storage connectivity includes two SATA 6 Gb/s and four SATA 3 Gb/s from the PCH, two SATA 6 Gb/s from a discrete controller, and surprisingly, no eSATA. ASUS could have taken the opportunity to provide a more robust storage connectivity, maybe even drop in a discrete SAS controller. There are six USB 3.0 ports, two on the rear panel, four by headers. There are two gigabit Ethernet connections, both driven by Intel-made controllers. Firewire and 8-channel HD audio make for the rest of it. Expect this one to be among the more expensive socket LGA2011 motherboards you can buy from ASUS.
Source:
SweClockers
Based on the ATX form-factor, the P9X79WS uses a typical X79 motherboard layout. The socket LGA2011 is powered by a 10-phase Digi+ VRM, which is cooled by a heatsink that shares its heat with a VRM heatsink cluster over the memory VRM, and the one over the X79 PCH. There are eight DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting quad-channel DDR3 memory. All expansion slots are PCI-Express long-type, though the exact lane configuration is not known. The board is advertised with 4-way NVIDIA SLI and CrossFireX support, so at least four of those slots could be wired to the CPU.
20 Comments on ASUS Ready With X79 Workstation Board
I had a look through the manual and the white slots are both x4, but listed as PCI-E 2.0.
/excited
I like the rest of it though, very nice.
The P6T WS, P6T6 WS and P6T7 WS boards all had an onboard 2-port controller. I thought the P7F7-E WS also had one, but looked it up and it's just an additional SATA controller.
Oh well, hopefully a fixed Patsburg is just around the corner!
That's what ASUS did with the X58. The P6T6 came first and then the P6T7 came later and added on board firewire support and a couple other things. Both of them has support for SAS through a Marvel chip, but performance was meh. Though you can use the Marvel as either a SATA or SAS.
edit: According to S|A the first iteration of SB-E is going to lack PCIe 3.0 (maybe even the extreme version too?).
Yes, CAN hAZ!!!
Memory VRM heatsinks...are....interesting.
I see a Rampage IV Formula on ASUS' site but there's no info to be found.