Introduction

It has been about a month since the launch of Intel's latest HEDT platform, X99 Express. As Intel's true enthusiast platform, X99 Express is filled to the rim with features and goodies to help you get the most out of your computing experience, providing both high core counts and the latest in memory technology, DDR4. Add in M.2 drive support and SATA Express functionality on nearly every product and Intel's X99 Express is one of the most forward-looking platforms ever released. Some of the features you cannot even make use of - yet.

For me, this has been a very interesting launch. Once again, when other sites are left with ES parts for testing to potentially present results which are quite a bit different from what the end-user may get, I managed to get retail samples of both the CPU and memory to ensure that the results I get in my tests are what you guys will get as well. That is important this time around since these motherboards not only include what the platform itself brings to the table as one brand, ASUS, managed to squeeze every feature of the platform into its products while also including a different socket design, which blew my mind. I've spent the past several weeks exploring all the boards I have here in my "testing lab", investigating ASUS's innovation, and with most of that testing complete, I can now release my results.

The first X99 board by ASUS I will review is the ASUS X99 DELUXE. As the forward-facing high-end option for mainstream users, it comes with everything you'd expect from ASUS and a bunch of additional goodies over and above that special "OC Socket", as ASUS calls it. Its got Wi-Fi, excellent audio, TPU and EPU power designs and features, support for multiple GPU configurations, and even comes packed with an additional fan controller and M.2 port, and the socket with its extra pins. Extras, extras, extras, but what about that price? I'll tell you, it's not full of extras. Let's take a look.

Specifications