ASRock Z77 Extreme11 Intel LGA1155

[cadaveca]

Fourteen SSDs, quad VGAs, 32 GB of RAM, and 8 threads of high performance Intel horsepower--is that what you are looking for? Look no further as the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 offers all that. ASRock's flagship Intel Z77 Express product, the Z77 Extreme11, does it all and includes an LSI SAS controller for an additional eight SATA ports.

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[erixx]

Cool review, but I am lost when in the conclusion you say it is good for heavy graphics stations (ok) or for "BitCoin miner". Is that techkie slang? Or do you mean it is good for financial analysis? Weird but for sure you don't need this board for online payments... Sorry

 

[W1zzard]

Cool review, but I am lost when in the conclusion you say it is good for heavy graphics stations (ok) or for "BitCoin miner". Is that techkie slang? Or do you mean it is good for financial analysis? Weird but for sure you don't need this board for online payments... Sorry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

 

[Madn3ss795]

"Good for Bitcoin miners" should be given to Asrock DEL series instead Nice review.

 

[Farmer Boe]

Great review Dave but noticed in the conclusion that for a negative point you said "Quad-SLI bridge has not been provided". This is because the board doesn't support Quad SLI with its PCI-E slot arrangement (you can see from the pinout when looking at the backside). The PLX chip might but the board doesn't. I checked and confirmed it on the Asrock website. Otherwise, keep up the excellent reviews!

 

[cadaveca]

Great review Dave but noticed in the conclusion that for a negative point you said "Quad-SLI bridge has not been provided". This is because the board doesn't support Quad SLI with its PCI-E slot arrangement (you can see from the pinout when looking at the backside). The PLX chip might but the board doesn't. I checked and confirmed it on the Asrock website. Otherwise, keep up the excellent reviews!

Ah yes, the sneaky x4 slot masquerading as a x16 slot got me. SLI doesn't ever work with a x4 slot.

 

[erixx]

Thanks masters, it feels good to not know something sometimes

Btw, the wikipedia page does not link to bitcoin sites...

 

[cadaveca]

Thanks masters, it feels good to not know something sometimes

Btw, the wikipedia page does not link to bitcoin sites...

Because bitcoin is a "distributed currency", there is no real "bitcoin site", merely sites of "holding houses", which act similar to banks, but not really. The original author does have a blog, though.

AMD VGAs can generate a decent amount of income vs. cost right now, due to value of bitcoin. I cashed out a bunch @ $163 each, before the recent drop, and made a bit of profit after paying the power bill, etc. As a way to generate income with spare cycles, BitCoin does offer something right now, but how profitable it really is changes from day to day, with the value of the coins. Naturally, the more VGAs you have working on making coins, the more profitable it is.

Even though one of the slots is a x4 slot, this is still sufficient for bitcoin mining. AMD VGAs don't even need high VGA ram speeds to produce good results.

 

[Razorfang]

Because bitcoin is a "distributed currency", there is no real "bitcoin site", merely sites of "holding houses", which act similar to banks, but not really. The original author does have a blog, though.

AMD VGAs can generate a decent amount of income vs. cost right now, due to value of bitcoin. I cashed out a bunch @ $163 each, before the recent drop, and made a bit of profit after paying the power bill, etc. As a way to generate income with spare cycles, BitCoin does offer something right now, but how profitable it really is changes from day to day, with the value of the coins. Naturally, the more VGAs you have working on making coins, the more profitable it is.

Even though one of the slots is a x4 slot, this is still sufficient for bitcoin mining. AMD VGAs don't even need high VGA ram speeds to produce good results.

For the price of this motherboard alone, wouldn't it be more cost effective to buy one of Butterfly Labs $275 Bitcoin miner?

 

[cadaveca]

For the price of this motherboard alone, wouldn't it be more cost effective to buy one of Butterfly Labs $275 Bitcoin miner?

Nope. That isn't even released yet, and lead time is several months(meaning you'll be waiting months after the actual release to get one ordered today).

Pre-order Terms: Bitforce SC (ASIC) products are shipped according to placement in the order queue, and delivery may take 2 months or more after order. All sales are final

The ASRock Z77 Extreme11 is available right now.

But yeah, the miner ASIC designs are pretty powerful for their cost. However, no one can tell you the value of Bitcoin when the miners launch, or when you get them, but 7970's can be had right now, and can be used for other purposes. Nothing can ever beat a design built for a specific purpose.

 

[NeoXF]

What is Intel Z77X platform!?

 

[cadaveca]

What is Intel Z77X platform!?

Z77 Express-based designs??




Take a look an nearly any brand, nearly all have Z77X in naming.

 

[radrok]

Dat amount of SATA ports.

This is why I liked the X79 Extreme11 so much, hope they won't wait that much to release an Haswell-E based Extreme11 when time will be.

I could easily jump from ASUS to Asrock if this would be happening

 

[Steven B]

hey nice review. NVM i saw you added the VRm stuff in the OC hardware section.

 

[Razorfang]

Nope. That isn't even released yet, and lead time is several months(meaning you'll be waiting months after the actual release to get one ordered today).

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[blibba]

Dat amount of SATA ports.

I don't know why this review doesn't cover this issue, but:

Those extra 8 SATA Ports aren't all they could be for random reads.

 

[cadaveca]

I don't know why this review doesn't cover this issue, but:

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6228/LSI Read with Chipset_575px.png

Those extra 8 SATA Ports aren't all they could be for random reads.

I don't have enough SSDs to test the ports fully populated in RAID. Testing with a single drive netted me 522.6 MB/s vs the 511.1 MB of the Intel ports and didn't show any issues. Having mixed drives didn't show any issues either. But honestly, I don't really look at 4K, since most data is a mix of data sizes, not just 4K.

 

[blibba]

I don't have enough SSDs to test the ports fully populated in RAID. Testing with a single drive netted me 522.6 MB/s vs the 511.1 MB of the Intel ports and didn't show any issues. Having mixed drives didn't show any issues either. But honestly, I don't really look at 4K, since most data is a mix of data sizes, not just 4K.

The average user is going to be most concerned about mixed performance from small numbers of SSDs, I imagine.

Evidently the LSI controller will hold that up to some extent, as mixed performance is more than just sequential reads and writes. Though I'd be interested to know whether it chops a chunk of performance off any drive, or just has a performance ceiling which will bottleneck faster drives.

 

[cadaveca]

The average user is going to be most concerned about mixed performance from small numbers of SSDs, I imagine.

Evidently the LSI controller will hold that up to some extent, as mixed performance is more than just sequential reads and writes. Though I'd be interested to know whether it chops a chunk of performance off any drive, or just has a performance ceiling which will bottleneck faster drives.

I think it's a performance ceiling dictated by the way the controller is connected to the system. It might also be that the controller is really intended for SAS drives, and isn't as fast with normal SATA...


Interesting topic, for sure.
However, with only a couple of boards supporting so many drives, the cost of buying SSDs to test with isn't something I'm prepared to accept. If anyone wants to send me drives for free, I'm more than game for any sort of testing.

 

[m1dg3t]

Could be less verbose, although i did enjoy the selection. I much preferred the uneditted version of the review... In the future can you include images of your power consumption testing and possibly a lil more breakdown of the process?

 

[cadaveca]

Could be less verbose, although i did enjoy the selection. I much preferred the uneditted version of the review... In the future can you include images of your power consumption testing and possibly a lil more breakdown of the process?

What do you mean by verbose?

Power consumption testing is done using Prime95 Blend mode. I use Kill-a-watt device on the PSU plug, and Zalman inline meters on both CPU 8-pin and VGA PCIe plugs. The Zalman meters were calibrated by myself using a clamp meter over the cables. I have a specific timed point where measurements are taken.

Nobody else does testing similar right now, so I'm not sure exactly what sort of a breakdown you're looking for? It's actually pretty basic...I report both over the 8-pin EPS and what the Kill-a-watt clone gives me as readings.