Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than that, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several other applications to do so, but merely serves to provide repeatable power draw numbers anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. In my test environment, it provides results similar to a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


The ASRock X99 Extreme11 fared pretty well in our load tests. ASRock uses a boosted default Turbo profile, so you get both decent performance and excellent power consumption. This accounts for some of the benchmarking performance, clearly indicated by stellar CPU testing results; however, that doesn't account for the excellent memory performance at 2133 MHz, which surpasses many other boards that claim to do well because of "additional pins". This is part of the reason I wasn't too eager to push my reviews out for the Intel X99 platform...the results screamed to be investigated since many other boards did not fare as well as the ASRock Extreme11 does here. That's not to say it overclocks like mad, which other boards do, but at the same time, does it really need to? If you are buying this board for it's excellent drive connectivity, reaching sky-high overclocks isn't going to be your primary focus, is it? Perhaps ultimate stability is more to your liking? AS the power consumption numbers indicate, the ASRock X99 Extreme11 provides that in spades.

Fan Control

Fan control, although quite advanced on the ASRock X99 Extreme11, isn't all that it could be, at least in my books. It's nice to see that you can select a 0% fan speed option and go all the way up to 100%, but I'm not too impressed by the inclusion of only two 4-pin headers, while the rest of the headers only have three. Be that as it may, such support means you can shut fans down completely until they are needed, making this board a good option for a high-data-density HTPC.