Due to the thickness of most graphics-card coolers, CrossFire and SLI users will typically find the third x16-length slot inaccessible.When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.The price could also entice prosumers seeking to go from a six-core to an eight-core CPU.
But the boards restrictive slot configuration limits its appeal to niche cases. Amazon Prime 551 We check over 130 million products every day for the best prices Features Layout Similar prices between Intels Core i7-7800X and Core i7-8700K havent gone unnoticed by value-seeking performance PC builders. Both have six cores and 12 threads, but the i7-8700K is clocked higher and has more cache. The top processor in the mainstream segment looks like a clear value leader, until we consider the 7800Xs extra PCIe lanes. More drives can interface the CPU directly, rather than going through the chipsets shared four-lane interface. Yet just when you start to think that Core-X might be the way to go, youre slapped with the reality of 300 motherboards. Maybe you cant afford it ASRock thinks it can help We cant exactly say that the 200 X299 Extreme4 will fill all of your Core-X-pectations, however, as one of the ways ASRock kept cost down was to reduce the number of PCIe pathway switches, compared to these previously mentioned 300 rivals. Rather than rant about Intels decision to produce Kaby Lake-X, lets see what the board can do with the remaining lanes Rather than lose any storage pathways when connected to a Kaby Lake-X processor, the X299 Extreme4 ties both M.2 slots to the chipset. Users who would rather have faster storage than SLI can use an adapter such as ASRocks Ultra Quad M.2 Card to add up to four NVMe drives to a single x16 slot. ASRock will tell you that youll need a 44-lane (Core i9) processor to get 16 lanes to its second PCIe x16 slot, but what it didnt say is that users of 28-lane CPUs can alternatively put their graphics card in the second x16 slot and operate it with eight pathways, while using the first x16 slot for storage. ASRock even provides the settings to address the four storage cards independently in the top x16 slot. The above settings worked perfectly for us, and that our graphics card lost only around 5 in the transition from x16 to x8 mode. Asrock X299 Motherboards Manual Configuration WasWe also found that PCIe 1.0 was the default mode for a single graphics card mounted in the second x16 slot, so that manual configuration was necessary to reach the cards performance potential. Having shown that the first x16 slot can be used for storage (to enable 4x4 NVMe configurations on 28-lane processors), were ready to treat the X299 Extreme4 as a true High-End Desktop platform and get back to the pretty pictures A VROC interface at the top of the boards front edge allows builders to essentially add RAID firmware to the CPU-based PCIe lanes, enabling RAID mode for multi-M.2 adapter cards such as the one mentioned above. Other high-speed storage options include eight SATA 6Gbs ports at the front of the board, Type-A and Type-C USB 3.1 Gen2 ports on the IO panel, and two M.2 interfaces above and below the top PCIe x16 slot. Asrock X299 Motherboards Full Compatibility WithA third M.2 interface near the boards back edge uses the PCIeUSB interface of Key-E for full compatibility with notebook-based Wi-FiBluetooth combo cards. Weve been proponents for the retention of USB 2.0 as a keyboardmouse interface ever since Intel introduced flexible HSIO interfaces for PCIe, SATA, and USB 3.0. Those resources are a little scarce, and theres no need to waste any on a keyboard and mouse. Asrock X299 Motherboards Plus Two PS2ASRock takes resource conservation to the next level by having two USB 2.0 plus two PS2 ports, none of which needs an HSIO pathway. Other IO-panel items include five analog and one digital optical audio interface, four USB 3.0 and two USB 3.1 Gen2 interfaces, and a CLRCMOS button. While expensive boards typically preserve IO resources by using a hub for some of their USB 3.0 ports, ASRock gets around that problem by not having a second USB 3.0 front-panel header. This also makes sense, since each header serves two ports, and most cases have only two USB 3.0 front-panel ports. Layout oddities include a top PCIe x16 slot that aligns to the cases third expansion slot, and a front-panel audio connector thats pushed forward from the traditional corner by about an inch. While the audio-header placement is beneficial to those whose cables might otherwise come up a little short, pushing a graphics-card slot southward while maintaining three slots of separation (for improved graphics cooling) means that the second PCIe x16 slot aligns to the cases sixth position.
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