The ASRock X299 Killer SLI/ac might be misleading a bit with its name. I personally thought I'd find a KillerNIC network controller here on this board, but there isn't one, so one might wonder, why does it have such a name? That's one question I myself cannot answer. But there are many other questions I do have the answers to.

From the board's packaging to how it feels in your hands, the ASRock X299 Killer SLI/ac definitely feels entry-level and value-oriented. Yet when you put it to use, you find quite the opposite to be the case, so maybe what this board is good at is killing misconceptions about what it takes to build a quite decent motherboard. As the cheapest board for Intel's X299 platform on offer from ASRock in the general US market, the ASRock X299 Killer SLI/ac sets the bar pretty high for what your just over $200 get you. You get great power efficiency and bundled Wi-Fi, SLI capability for KabyLake-X CPUs (as there should be given the board's name), and a pretty decent slot layout ready for multi-GPU users. You get a BIOS ready to overclock your CPU and with pretty decent XMP capabilities, and an OK sound circuit for your gaming needs. Maybe you'd add in an additional sound card anyway; there is no audio-tuning software on offer other than the default Realtek control panel. It is interesting to see that it is places like this (licensed audio software) where ASRock chooses to make changes to save on costs on some products and give additional value on others.

With a lack of add-on PCIe controllers to expand the board's connectivity, there's not a lot of added noise or anything getting in the way of what the platform naturally offers, leaving less in the way of what is there already. The platform is complicated enough as it is. Quite a few of the other boards ASRock offers for the X299 platform do not support SLI for Kabylake-X CPUs, but the X299 Killer SLI/ac does, so its abilities clearly stand out from even those other ASRock X299 boards. Perhaps this is a great indicator of which type of X299 user this board is directed at; that is, those wanting to use a KabyLake-X CPU rather than the many-cored SkyLake-X variant. That means you might want to look at this board if you are looking to buy the mainstream Z270 platform and want an upgrade path that offers many cores, and many channels of DRAM, too. That's quite interesting as it seems most other brands have decided to ignore those users who want KabyLake-X CPUs, and to me, that is a damn shame. So good for you, ASRock, for stepping up to the plate and bringing it home.