Asus caters to the high-end market’s connectivity needs with six USB 3.0 ports on the P9X79 Deluxe’s rear panel, in addition to two front-panel ports, four internal USB 2.0 headers, and four rear-panel ports. If that's not enough, one of the always-deluxe dual gigabit Ethernet network connectors is fed by Intel’s reputable PHY.
Asus’ BT Go 3.0 module adds both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to the I/O panel, plugging between Asus’ USB BIOS Flashback switch and the first set of USB 3.0 ports. USB BIOS Flashback allows BIOS to be updated from a USB flash drive (in the white USB 2.0 port) with nothing more than power cords connected.

The blue PCIe x16 slots each feature a full set of pathways connected directly to the CPU, spaced four slots apart for perfect graphics cooling, even with triple-slot cards. We did find a problem in the manual, however, which lists the wrong slot order. The two x16 slots in the middle are visibly wired for eight lanes, and the second of those two borrows its lanes from the bottom slot whenever a card is installed there.
That means three-way CrossFireX and SLI are possible within a standard seven-slot case, given x16-x8-x16 transfers, with each card spaced two slots apart. Quad-card arrays could be possible with single-slot cards, but the only single-slot boards you'll find with two bridges are high-end liquid-cooled parts.
The P9X79 Deluxe’s remaining layout is fairly good, with the front-panel audio cable moved forward along the motherboard’s bottom edge for easier cable reach, and the front-panel USB 3.0 header placed above all expansion slots on the front edge. The eight-pin ATX/EPS 12V header’s latch is on the top, which could cause a little difficulty removing the cable if the builder wraps it around the back of a motherboard tray.
We should also mention that four of the P9X79 Deluxe’s rear USB 3.0 ports are shared on a VL810 hub, a fact that might be noticed by anyone who tries to ram 20 Gb/s of data through its constrained 5 Gb/s connection.

We really love that Asus includes eight internal SATA cables with the eight-port P9X79 Deluxe, along with a Wi-Fi antenna, a flexible SLI bridge, and a rigid three-way SLI bridge. CrossFire users should find the appropriate bridges packaged with their cards.
- Sandy Bridge-E And X79: The Best Intel Has To Offer
- ASRock X79 Extreme9
- X79 Extreme9 Firmware
- Asus P9X79 Deluxe
- Asus P9X79 WS
- Asus’ UEFI
- Gigabyte G1.Assassin2
- Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5
- Gigabyte’s UEFI
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3D Games
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- X79 Overclocking
- Which High-End X79 Motherboard Is Best?


You might want re check the facts.
Thanks.
How could that happen? ASRock has repeatedly removed previous BIOS versions from its website and labeled the replacement as the initial release.
This review was published after many hours of collaboration with ASRock, and some of the problems with this specific CPU are further detailed in the overclocking section. ASRock acknowledged the problem exists with a portion of the C1 CPU supply and has begun issuing patched BIOS to fix the multiplier issue, according to ASRock engineer William Yu.
Not to mention that they didnt say they couldnt hit 4.4ghz, they just stated they didnt get that high without going beyond 1.35v
Kinda wish we got to see a MAX overclock for air before temps got out of control =P
But then you get various coolers involved... yada yada... but PLEASE anyway
I had to comment on something. I can't really comment on the hardware as its so enthusiast and SB-E is well beyond my needs. I can't comment too much on the bios because I still barely understand mine, but I am seeing the trend that it might be best to stick with what you know, or risk having to translate the various names/definitions of settings across different products. I'm not that smart nor that patient. I liked the comment on the 6.00...lol... %! I never would have thought. I think that just deciphered half of my bios options, thanks. /wink
Just sayin'
Question does tht little fan on the motherboard get loud? If it does that would be a deal breaker for me
On a side note I would love to see how these boards look assembled
I am running 4.4GHz on 1.2V Revision C1 ASRock Extreme4 Bios 1.50. At 1.4V i can run 5.0Ghz but i don't have good enough cooler so i reverted back to 4.4.
I was wondering the same thing. I was about to purchase the rampage iv extreme then I saw this story. I was hoping to see it compaired with these boards. But, maybe it's in a league of its own.
It uses the same chipset and Asus doesn't differentiate integrated components on a per board testing basis. It will almost assuredly perform at the same level the other boards do, it just has a brand name unscaled cost and different tweak software.
In general, the entire x79 platform seems poorly executed to me. For having over twice the transistor count of a Sandy Bridge chip, the E line does not have performance to match that much of a die size increase, coupled with the base TDP being as high as it is, I would expect many more cores or much higher clocks out of them, especially considering they don't waste die space on integrated graphics.
That and the motherboards to go with the platform are all extremely overpriced. It is understandable that a new socket type has a lot of manufacturing overhead, and 4 channel RAM is magnitudes more complicated circuitry than dual channel, and having the PCI lanes support almost three times the bandwidth and channels is costly. But it isn't triple the price of a reasonable z68 motherboard costly.
The CPU is worse; for a total buy-in of $920+ (adds the cost of an i7-3930K) you can build a very nice system indeed, as the $1K SBM articles clearly show.
In today's economic climate, X79 may make sense for only a very few people. I'm not one of them, and while there's certainly no harm in reading about it, I doubt many regular Tom's readers are either.
Suckers!! haha
Which makes me wonder. If a 2600K can normally hit 4.8GHz on modest air cooling, and an i7 3960X is going to typically max out at around 4.4GHz with the same Vcore and cooling.... that's a 10% higher clock speed on the 2600K. The 3960X should perform about 20% faster at the same speed.... meaning... the difference is going to be what? 10% in favor of the 3960X.
So, 10% more performance for about 3 times the cost.
For anything but professional workstations, it seems that X79 doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Next year i'm getting a new LGA 2011 mobo and an "old" 2600K and spare some cash for a better GPU.
Greedy bastards...