ASRock's X99 Extreme11 Has 18 SATA Ports

If you're someone who likes storage -- but like, really likes storage -- ASRock might just have the right motherboard for you. Today, the company announced its X99 Extreme11, which has a staggering 18 SATA ports.

The rest of the board is actually quite well-rounded. It comes with the LGA2011-3 socket, which is wired to the X99 Express chipset and eight DDR4 memory slots for quad-channel memory configurations. Power is fed to the CPU through a very tough 12-Phase VRM design.

You'll also find five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, which are wired through two PLX 8747 bridge chips to allow all four installed graphics cards to have access to 16 PCI-Express lanes each. To deliver extra power to the motherboard, there is also a 4-pin Molex connector near the rear I/O.

Of the 18 SATA ports, 10 are SATA3 ports from the Intel X99 Express chipset, while the other eight are SAS ports stemming from the LSI SAS 3008 controller, although you can hook up SATA 3 drives to these without issue. Just to rub in how many SATA ports this is, ASRock even included a picture of them all next to each other, which is taller than half of the E-ATX size motherboard. Thankfully, they are angled sideways, and not upwards. Who wants to build a monster RAID-0 array with this?

If for some reason you want more storage beyond what the numerous SATA ports provide, the motherboard has two Ultra M.2 slots, which are fed by four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes each.

Of course, things don't end there. ASRock also fitted the rear I/O of the board with four USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports (with four more accessible through front I/O headers), two eSATA ports, a legacy PS/2 port, dual Intel Gigabit Ethernet, and lastly, 8-channel HD audio jacks, which are wired to the Purity Sound 2 hardware.

Now, to find a case in which we can fit this many drives.

Anyway, ASRock did not reveal pricing or availability, but to expect the X99 Extreme11 to cost anything less than $500 is nothing short of a pipe dream.

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