A user who goes by the name VSG on the LinusTechTips forums has posted some images of the upcoming X99 Deluxe motherboard, which is one of Asus' upcoming boards supporting Haswell-E processors. We've had looks at plenty of X99 motherboards dribbling out from other manufacturers, but we haven't seen an Asus X99 motherboard revealed yet.
This ATX board has eight DDR4 memory slots for quad-channel memory and a staggering five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots for expansion, as well as another PCI-Express 4x slot. A handful of SATA3 (6 Gb/s) ports take care of storage connectivity, along with either one or two SATA-Express interfaces, although given the limited visibility, we can't be sure yet.
On the topic of storage, we're not even sure whether the motherboard has M.2 connectivity. There is a slot that vaguely resembles an M.2 slot between the ATX power connector and the SATA ports, but mounting an SSD in there would have the drive protruding straight out from the motherboard, which seems a bit silly. It could also be that there simply isn't an M.2 slot at all, although given the massive increases in potential bandwidth with newer M.2 applications it would also seem a little silly of Asus not to include it on a high-end board like this one. Hopefully, it's just mounted on the rear of the board or behind a heat-shield where we can't see.
Regarding other features, the motherboard appears to have dedicated audio hardware in the form of 'Crystal Sound 2,' as well as support for wireless connectivity. Rear I/O consists of ten USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, what is likely a clear CMOS switch, and finally 8-channel HD audio connectors.
No word on pricing or availability yet, although we do expect that the X99 motherboards, along with DDR4 memory and, of course, the Haswell-E processors will launch on August 29.
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