The Board - A Closer Look

We already mentioned the power switch cluster, which you can see in the first image above. Unlike previous ASUS boards, there is no Clear_CMOS jumper on the board, and the little red switch next to the ON/OFF and RESET switches is the only way to clear the CMOS. The button on the back is for the USB BIOS Flashback, instead of a CLEAR_CMOS switch, which might confuse some users, but this little innovation is something we welcome with open arms, as having to pull out a VGA to get to the jumper can be a real pain, never mind having to find a jumper on those boards that only have two pins for CMOS clearing. The BIOS chip on the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe is provided by Winbond, a 64 Mb part. Once the BIOS kicks to life when the switches are pressed, so does the POST LED display seen in the third image above, ultimately useful in diagnosing boot failures, whether by incompatible settings or hardware, or by overclocking.


The dual-digit POST display isn't the only form of boot-up diagnosis display, either; the four pictures above show the Q-LED system that consists of four LEDs in various locations around the board. The Q-LED feature helps decipher the codes given on the dual-digit POST display; as the POST boot process is active, these LEDs will light up in the order they are in the images above, and should the boot fail, the LED will remain lit, indicating where on the board the fault is.


There are three other switches that are involved with the boot process; the MemOK! button found just above the 24-pin power connector, and the TPU and EPU switches, located on the board's bottom edge. Pressing the MemOK! button will start a boot-up routine that will test system RAM, and then change the settings for timings and voltage in the BIOS as required, ensuring that nearly every DIMM will in the very least, boot properly. The TPU switch offers a very easy overclock option, as when you flip the switch to the right, a pre-determined overclocking profile that varies by the installed CPU will be enabled, over-riding the defaults in BIOS. The EPU switch kind of does the opposite, enabling some power-saving features and settings that can help lower overall system power consumption. Both the TPU and EPU switches can be enabled at the same time, although it's suggested to use only one or the other for the best stability.


System monitoring functionality is provided by two onboard devices, the first of which is the Nuvoton NCT6776F Super I/O. the second is the TPU chip, seen in the second image above. Together, both offer all the monitoring and fan control functionality that the P9X79 Deluxe offers, with the TPU chip expanding the Nuvoton NCT6776F's sensor capabilities. The third image above shows the Digi+/EPU chip, that when paired with the TPU chip, forms the ASUS "Dual Intelligent Processors III" solution. The TPU chip does the monitoring, as we mentioned, while the Digi+/EPU chip is responsible for controlling the VRM, although it's just the primary controller, rather than the complete Digi+ solution.


The three images above show the rest of the Digi+ VRM system, with three slave controllers, each responsible for its own section of the power delivery system. Each is labeled pretty clearly as "A", "B", and "C", with "A" & "B" seemingly responsible for DIMM power control, and "C" takes responsibility for the PCH VRM, and possibly the CPU's System Agent domain, whose VRM is close by. The main controller manages the 20-phase CPU VRM itself, and combined with the TPU chip, we have a pretty complex and robust power management and monitoring system, exclusive to ASUS motherboards. This fine-grained power delivery can allow for the best possible overclocking, or the best possible power savings, which really helps separate the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe from other products available on the market today. It's not often that we need 15 pictures to show how the board boots up, and what powers it, and even though there is 15 pictures just for that, we haven't even covered the VRMs themselves!


The P9X79 Deluxe features a standard hi/low VRM design, with ten phases all together in a neat row, seen in the first image above, except that there is 20 phases (16 for the CPU, and four for the System Agent), and the second picture above shows the other ten phases on the backside of the board, as is common for most Intel X79 Express products. We do find ten independent input drivers, each of which powers two phases; one on front, and one on back. The third image above shows the VTT power phases, two of them, which are found between the socket and the uppermost PCIe slot. The mid-board cooler sits above these power phases, but doesn't actually make contact with any of the surface-mounted components.


The above two pictures show the two dual-phase DIMM VRMs, the first image showing the VRM for the right bank, and the second showing the VRM for the left bank. Each VRM section is located as close as possible to the DIMMs they power, in order to eliminate line noise and line interference from other onboard parts. Each phase for the DIMM VRMs has its own input driver and high/low MOSFETs, as well as chokes and capacitors for each phase. Given the complexity of the circuit, it is nothing short of an engineering marvel that ASUS has managed to fit so much functionality into a standard ATX form-factor product.


The PCIe subsystem is pretty complex as well. We find and ICS PLL and an ICS Clock buffer matched up with ASMedia ASM1480 PCIe 3.0 switches. Together this solution ensures noise-free and jitter-free clocks for all PCIe devices, and is part of what helps the board scale up the BCLK independently of the PCIe bus.


The included Realtek ALC898 HD codec supports 7.1 audio, and meets Microsoft's WLP3.x audio requirements. Supporting 44.1k/48k/96k/192 kHz sampling at 16-, 20- and 24-bit, the Realtek ALC8989 includes full support for HD audio formats featuring Content Protection, if supporting software is used. It is also DirectSound 3D compatible, so no area of usage or functionality is overlooked, including support for DTS Connect, and DTS Ultra PC II. ASUS has sourced the LAN controllers for the P9X79 Deluxe from not only Realtek, but Intel this time as well, outfitting the P9X79 Deluxe with dual Ethernet controllers equipped to meet the needs of everyone, even those that prefer the Intel 82579V solution over the Realtek 8111E chipset. Both meet the 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet appliance standard, although some users find the relatively new-to-market Intel controller a bit faster as well as offering more functionality than the fairly old Realtek 8111E that has become utterly common in the industry, no matter which OEM's products you refer to.


For extra drive support via the eSATA and internal SATA ports, ASUS has turned to Marvell and ASMedia, with a Marvell 88SE9128 controller powering the extra two internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and the ASMedia ASM1061 powering the eSATA 6Gb/s ports found on the rear I/O. Both controllers are widely used in many different products found on store shelves today, so we are very glad to see them used rather than something a bit more customized that might bring a whole new set of problems. Fortunately, that's not something that is heard of too often with these particular controllers.


For USB 3.0 support, we find three matching ASMedia ASM1042 PCIe controllers, two for the ports on the rear, and one for the internal header that provides USB 3.0 to casing front panels. The two ASMedia controllers near the rear I/O are mated with a VIA VLI VL810 USB 3.0 Super-Speed hub to provide the Super-Speed functionality that ASUS boasts as the "USB 3.0 Boost" technology. We are not fully sure exactly how the full solution works, as technically, there's the possibility for quite a bit here, but even driver installations didn't help us decipher how ASUS has things wired up, as our USB 3.0 test drive wasn't supported by the "USB 3.0 Boost" technology. We do know that the VIA controller can run in ganged mode with another device, but we are not sure if that functionality has been enabled, or whether the VIA controller works two ports on its own, as the ASMedia ASM1042 controller only support two ports each, leaving two ports that must be controlled by the VIA VLI VL810 controller.


Moving on to cooling, we find the coolers in the two pictures above on the lower half of the board, with the first found just below the CPU socket. This cooler is actually only really a radiator for the southbridge cooler shown in the second image, and the two are connected via a heatpipe.


The next two images show the VRM cooling, and again, the first image shows a cooler that is effectively just a radiator, and doesn't contact the parts underneath it, while the second image shows the actual cooler, and the two are joined together via a heatpipe. The VRM cooler is attached with a backplate that covers the MOSFETs on the back side of the board, and also helps ensure excellent contact.


With all the coolers removed, we can easily see the heatpipes that join them. We were actually quite surprised to find these heatpipes to be super-efficient, transferring heat to their radiator elements very effectively. Flipping the coolers over, we can see the contact areas in the thermal interface materials in each heatsink. The VRM cooler has very distinctive impressions in it from the MOSFETs it cools, while the southbridge cooler has just a single small contact area that the chipset itself is cooled with. It's also very obvious looking at the cooler undersides that the radiator elements make contact with very little, other than the board surface, but even that is buffered with by standoffs, or foam pads.


In the above picture you can clearly see the new Intel X79 Express chipset, found under the large southbridge cooler. The chip itself is fairly large, and is surrounded by a complex array of surface mounted bits on the board itself.