Seven $260-$320 X79 Express Motherboards, Reviewed

By Thomas Soderstrom
published

With 40 lanes of PCIe 3.0 connectivity to host all of our high-bandwidth devices, LGA 2011 certainly qualifies as a premium processor interface. Today we examine seven X79-based motherboards that offer high-end features at a more palatable price.

Power, Heat, And Efficiency

MSI unexpectedly takes the lead from Intel, which is known to optimize for power, in this consumption metric, though only by a small margin.

Foxconn’s Quantumian-1 is a cool operator, while ECS’ voltage circuitry runs a little warm. We also found that Foxconn has a supremely stable voltage regulator, though it wasn’t the best overclocker.

We put both average performance and average power consumption on a percent scale and subtract 100% from the findings to zero out the chart. This shows that MSI’s 6% lower-than-average power consumption gives its boards a 6% higher-than-average efficiency rating.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
41 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Crashman
    Update: C2 CPU is now here!
    Reply
  • jprahman
    So when will we see results with a C2?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    jprahmanSo when will we see results with a C2?It's going to take around a month to prepare another roundup...so I guess good news comes with bad news, sorry.
    Reply
  • amuffin
    :o foxconn boards are pretty good.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    amuffinfoxconn boards are pretty good.They've been making decent enthusiast boards on-and-off for a while.
    Reply
  • morne
    Quick coment on looks only (I know its specs that count not looks but oh well)
    ASRock X79 Extreme6/GB - very nice all black looks better than gigabytes atempt
    Asus P9X79 Pro - new baby blue they use on all the boards... not for me
    ECS X79R-AX - looks like my old pentium 2 board with the white slots
    Foxconn Quantumian-1 - i like i like gives a feeling of the ROG ASUS boards
    Gigabyte X79-UD3 - rip of from the ASRock X79 Extreme6/GB (lol) plus the southbridge heatsink looks old fasion and ugly.
    Intel DX79SI - now this board for me looks good actualy more than good looks the best :) must be the scull lol
    MSI X79A-GD65 8D - also very nice love the blue + Black.

    If you have one of the boards and i insulted it, wasnt the intention, just my view of the board>

    Reply
  • stingstang
    My only question is.. Why do you guys need 6 freaking $1050 processors? Good golly gosh!
    Reply
  • ubercake
    Great descriptive article.

    One thing I'm not sure of is the acceptance and actual usage of eSATA. While practical at some level, is anyone actually using this MB feature or is this one of those things the MB producers can skip out on like parallel and serial ports? I'm not sure enthusiasts are all that into using their eSATA ports?

    Personally, I think this is one of those money saving opportunities MB producers should consider.
    Reply
  • geekapproved
    After the X58 anal pounding, you would be a moron to buy a X79. It's life is predicted to be even shorter than X58.
    Reply
  • morne
    Actualy i agree with you ubercake, i have never used my E-sata, and with usb 3.0 out doubt anyone still uses E-sata if they have before.
    Reply