Lane splitter.
Landing around the middle ground of X99 pricing, the X99X Killer from ASRock doesn’t have any agship features to set it apart from the rest. Instead it ticks off all the expected boxes while arriving with a rather attractive price point. Let’s see what’s in the box.
The biggest surprise is the number of full length PCIe lanes, with only three included on the board, limiting it to triple GPU setups. It’ll only impact a handful of users, but we were still a little surprised. Adding insult to injury is the fact that there are only two more PCIe x1 lanes, delivering a total of five – that’s quite limiting for such an expensive board. As well as the ten SATA 3 ports on the board, another Ultra M.2 port is included, connected to a PCIe 3.0 x4 lane. There’s no sign of SATA Express, though there is a port included to add ASRock’s proprietary Thunderbolt 2 card, which is sold separately.
Onboard audio is handled by the ubiquitous ALC 1150 codec from Realtek, paired with a few custom amps, while dual network ports are provided by both Killer and Intel chipsets. Overclockers will appreciate the twelve phase power, but it’s not really intended to be a record breaker.
We’re a little surprised by the offering here – ASRock is renowned for offering amazing bang for buck, but the lack of PCIe lanes is a little concerning. This is balanced out by the huge capacity for memory, with eight slots ready to be lled, but we think most gamers would prefer to have space for add-in cards. BENNETT RING
We’re guessing the X99 isn’t a cheap chipset, as this board lacks ASRock’s usual range of goodies.