When I first got the ASRock X79 Extreme11, I quite literally laughed when I saw the price. No matter how you look at it, $600 for any motherboard is a tough pill for nearly any user to swallow. I'll admit, that the packaging and physical feel of the board in your hands is very impressive. I was, because of that, quite eager to start playing with it. Once I had powered it on, and left it idling while I did some other stuff, I thought that perhaps it might be better than I was expecting. I, as such, went and made myself a cup of coffee to drink while testing. When I came back, I flipped right out - the noise coming from the board sounded like it was dying!!!
I was not sure what ASrock was thinking with that fan at first, but once I had removed the cooler and saw all the chips underneath, I began to understand. This is not a normal board. This is not a practical board, either. What it is, is the highest of the high-end, with no compromises, including noise considerations. Yeah, it's noisy, and yeah, it has to be.
You quickly get a different perspective on high performance computing if you have, like me, spent some time in a server room filled with hundreds of racks. The ASrock X79 Extreme11 is very much like one of those server racks, with top-level CPU power, and connectivity that no other board out there offers. Noise is just something you deal with if you want the very best in performance. Watercooling is just not an option with so many chips on the lower portion of the board. That left me with a choice - was the ASRock X79 Extreme11 bad, or was it just misunderstood?
Once I installed Windows and began my performance testing, I quickly realized I had simply misunderstood the board. Had the ASRock X79 Extreme11 performed any differently through the tests I put it under, I would have considered it a failure. It, to my pleasant surprise, proved itself as one of the best performance products I've ever tested, baring none. When I started overclocking, it required less voltage than any other product, all the while outscoring nearly every other product I have ever reviewed. Finally, I had a high-end product that truly had high-end performance! Yet even so, the noise was making my ears bleed.
I did manage to quell the noise of the fan through a custom fan profile, which also kept very decent temperatures, but I really wish ASrock had it a bit quieter by default. I suppose that when crammed full of high power VGAs, extra fan speed would be needed, and, once stuffed into a case, its fan is not as shrill as it was on my test bench. The one thing, however, that cannot be overlooked is the abysmal drive performance. Admittedly, I did not test the LSI controller with my single drives, but a big part of that is because it's really meant for RAID use, and I do not, at this time, have drives to test RAID. Fortunately, the used LSI controller is a new chip on the market that supports PCIe 3.0, which many current add-in cards cannot say of themselves, with the majority of them only supporting PCIe 2.0. I am sure the extra PCIe bandwidth will pay off when it comes to RAID performance.
So what about that price? Yes, it's very expensive, but after spending some time using the ASrock X79 Extreme11 daily, I really grew to accept that price, as it really does deliver everything I ever expected, and then some. If cost is of no concern to you, and you want to run four VGAs together, I really suggest you consider no other product. Just simply buy the ASRock X79 Extreme11. Yes, it's that good. Yes, it's not perfect, and yes, it's not for everyone, but boy, ASRock, you've done a great job here. I mean that too - I cannot wait to get this board installed into my personal system!!