ASRock Shares Pictures of Its X99 Extreme6 LGA2011 Motherboard

[Cristian_25H]

Today ASRock decided to show off yet another (last week it revealed the X99X Killer, X99M Killer and X99 WS) motherboard based on the Intel X99 chipset, the X99 Extreme6. This board, like the X99 WS, has a black and blue color theme and it features support for Haswell-E processors, eight DDR4 memory slots (for up to 128 GB of RAM), ten SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and one Ultra (PCIe 3.0 x4) M.2 connector, plus three PCI-Express x16 slots allowing SLI or CrossFire multi-GPU setups.

ASRock's creation also has 7.1 channel Purity Sound 2 audio, dual Gigabit Ethernet (includes one Intel NIC), two USB 2.0 and six USB 3.0 ports on the back panel plus another connector on the PCB near the DDR4 slots, one eSATA connector, and a debug LED. The X99 Extreme6 is expected to be officially launched next week.



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[Aquinus]

I still don't think I'm a fan of the gold caps against the blue heat sinks and DIMM slots. It looks fine against the black PCI-E slots though. I just think it's a interesting/weird color combination.

 

[JBVertexx]

Baby blue just doesn't look so "Extreme". They should have distinguished this design from the Z97 look.

 

[XL-R8R]

I still don't think I'm a fan of the gold caps against the blue heat sinks and DIMM slots. It looks fine against the black PCI-E slots though. I just think it's a interesting/weird color combination.

+1 on this.

I was hoping AsRock would continue with the black/gold theme they've been doing of late.... I'm quite fond of the look on my Z77 board.

 

[AsRock]

Yeah color is terrible although it would not stop me from buying it as function comes before looks for me.. That molex in the middle of the mobo would bother people with OCD due to cable management.

 

[Disparia]

I like it, coloring, good slot placement. M.2, SATA, and no SATA-Express.

Besides, it's only the Extreme6. The coloring will become more extreme with the upper models

 

[GhostRyder]

Meh, its a nice board but I so far like the competitors boards better than what ive seen from Asrock (Not specifically looks).

 

[Scrizz]

I like it, coloring, good slot placement. M.2, SATA, and no SATA-Express.

Besides, it's only the Extreme6. The coloring will become more extreme with the upper models

same, I'd take it for the 10 SATA M2 and NO Sata-E.

 

[Darksword]

Someone enlighten me... why do boards still have USB 2.0 ports? Can't USB 2.0 devices be used in a USB 3.0 port? Why not just make all ports on the motherboard USB 3.0?

 

[newtekie1]

I still don't think I'm a fan of the gold caps against the blue heat sinks and DIMM slots. It looks fine against the black PCI-E slots though. I just think it's a interesting/weird color combination.

I was worried about that too, but once I saw the color scheme in person it actually looks really good.

Someone enlighten me... why do boards still have USB 2.0 ports? Can't USB 2.0 devices be used in a USB 3.0 port? Why not just make all ports on the motherboard USB 3.0?

Several reasons:

The largest one is cost. USB3.0 controllers cost a lot more than USB2.0 controllers.

Plus most of the USB2.0 ports are built right into the chipset. They don't put as many USB3.0 controllers on the chipset because USB3.0 controllers take up a lot more silicon space.

Finally, native OS support for USB3.0 is terrible. So a lot of the time the USB3.0 ports simply won't work until you install the driver. So if a board had nothing but USB3.0 ports, you'd have no keyboard/mouse to install the OS and driver. Granted, this issue is worked around on some boards that do have only USB3.0 ports on the back by having a specific pair of ports that function in generic USB2.0 mode so the native drivers will work to allow you to install the OS and then they switch to USB3.0 mode when the proper driver is loaded.

 

[ypsylon]

Thanks but no thanks. Will take WS every time.

Extreme 6 is if anything slightly shafted version of WS. Chopped 1 Intel NIC for some cheaper fudge, chopped full size PCI-Ex slots for less powerful versions, added 2 extra USB 3 (instead 2.0) ports are not important at all.

It will be good giggle if they sell it for more than WS.

Perhaps Ex6 has some nitty-gritty thingy which will appeal to overclockers running benchmarks 24/7/365(6), but for real work - WS anytime, anywhere.

Not entirely sure about need to upgrade my X58, but if I do ASRock X99 WS (not Extreme6) is on top of my list (for sure it will be cheaper than over-hyped/priced Asus).

 

[Aquinus]

Extreme 6 is if anything slightly shafted version of WS. Chopped 1 Intel NIC for some cheaper fudge

I'm not really sure where you're going with this. My gateway has two Realtek 8111 NICs and two Intel 82571EBs and honestly, the Realtek ports aren't any more responsive than the Intel ports. My X79 board has Realtek RTL8167 along with an Intel 52579V and they both support the same features without any noticeable difference in latency. So I think this particular point is a little ridiculous since we're not talking about 10Gbps adapters here.