perhaps... but then again now you get Quad Channel, not to mention 4GB sticks are becoming pretty common now, that gives you 16GB of ram.
More than enough for most.
if you need more then this board is not targeted towards you.... for those who need more, likely also need error correction.
if your part of the VERY FEW PEOPLE! that want/need more then 16GB of ram without needing a server board then im sure they will also have 1 or 2 for you with extra ram slots.
Limited view of the potential? I like ripping my dvd collection to my hard drive and to formats that I can use (mobile media anyone?). If you have a ram disk of 9GB (dual layer dvd + extra) the processing speed will be dramatically higher. Combine that with the blisteringly fast 6 core, 12 threaded, beast that the enthusiast class will be and you've got a ripped and transcoded video file in less time than it takes to play it. Not a server application.
I see why they would skimp, especially given that these boards are about as far from production as possible while still functioning, but 1366 skimping in the beginning (yes, memory serves well) was just as inexcusable. I'm looking forward to making my 64 bit OS finally do some extreme lifting, and having my disk drives last longer because the paging file is a dedicated segment of my ram (I might have a thing for ram disk...).
THIS! I'm not too happy that it only has 6 expansion slots but I much prefer a better slot layout than a full complement. Interesting that all the non-full-length PCIe slots are open-ended, although that's probably just because this is an ES.
Also, 14 - FOURTEEN - SATA ports on an "entry-level" board? I would've thought the whopping 10 provided by the chipset would be more than enough, but this.... just wow.
You read the spec sheets from x79? The thing comes with 14 SATA, of which 10 are capable of SATA III (6 Gb/s) speeds. The pictures were posted a while back in this article:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143179&highlight=x79.
Enough with the "entry-level" nonsense.
It's not like this is a H61 chipset for your i3.
It'll cost more than most top-grade Z68 boards and will most likely be used in servers and production workstations. So the 12-14 SATA ports aren't unusual.
I second the notion. Enthusiast level is defined as not being budget minded. If I'm going to be spending $200+ to get entry into the low end (notice, I did not say budget) there had better be a compelling reason beyond more PCI-e and SATA. I could purchase two sets of processors and mother boards for the kind of pricing one socket 2011 will get me. Extra SATA is a good first step, but using a chipset to its fullest (~90% initially with improvements down the road) is something I demand from this pricing.
(below 24-pin)
