ASUS P9X79 WS High Performance Workstation Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
ASUS P9X79 WS High Performance Workstation Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
2012-02-20
welcome to yet another unboxing video
today we have a product that I am pretty
excited to take a look at this is a 9 X
79 WS so what we already know about it
based on the WS in the product name is
that this is a workstation grade board
from a soos so that means usually in the
past
tons of PCIe slots workstation great
features and workstation great
reliability so this is the kind of thing
you might want to use for a rendering
machine or if you're like some of these
Souza's customers even a very very
high-end gaming machine because yes
while all of that stable you know
quality stuff is there this is also a
completely overclocking friendly
motherboard as well so let's have a look
at what we've got in terms of included
accessories are really far away let's
have a look at what we've got in terms
of included accessories we have four
SATA 3 6 gigabit per second cables for
say 2 to 3 gigabit per second cables
various colors that's an interesting
strategy we've got a molex to SATA power
adapter we have a 4 Way SLI bridge BAM
matte black PCB on that by the way
looking boss 3-way SLI bridge also with
a matte black PCB love it and then we've
got the usual 2-way SLI bridge it's a
flexible one it's an orange one I sure
hope if you buy this board you're gonna
go with 3 or 4 Way SLI so that you can
use one of those instead we've got a
serial riser so that's a PCI bracket
that you can plug into the board if you
still need serial
that is a very workstation friendly
feature we've got cute connectors for
front USB as well as the front panel
connectors for power and whatnot we have
an eSATA as well as USB 2 PCI back pci
backplate and then we've got our i/o
shield and finally the user guide as
well as a DVD which you won't use
because you're gonna download the latest
off the asus website for all your
drivers and utilities and whatnot
speaking of utilities and drivers and
what not this one needs lots of them
because it has a lot of different
features that are actually pretty cool
so let's take out the board and then we
will get into all of that
neat stuff so the first thing the first
thing we see on this board is that it
has yes count of one two three four five
six PCI Express 16x physical slots so
not all these are actually wired for 16x
in fact only this one and this one are
actually wired for 16x these ones are
all wired for PCI e 8 X now bearing in
mind this is a PCI Express gen3 board
which means that even PCIe 8 X is going
to have the same bandwidth as PCIe 16x
Gen 2 so I'd be comfortable running a
graphics card in any one of these slots
no problem also remember on x79
there's no funky some of the PCI Express
Lanes are coming off the chipset and
some are coming off the cpu none of that
everything is coming out of the same
place so there's no additional latency
penalty for using a particular slot
versus another one so these are your two
main PCI Express 16x slots for two-way
graphics card configurations for 3-way I
guess I'd probably go with one two three
and then for four-way you don't really
have much of an option as one two three
four so those are your preferred
configurations what else we got on here
aha
like all of aces x79 boards this one has
eight DIMM slots which means support for
noodles and boatloads of memory which is
definitely necessary for a workstation
environment where you might be doing 3d
rendering or heavy video editing heavy
photo editing all of those kinds of
workloads where you need a ton of RAM so
that is built in to this particular
board there is our LGA 2011 socket with
our eight pin power connector nothing
really excessive on this board like no
to eight pins or anything like that it's
not really necessary anyway but but
there you have it there is our CPU PWM
off note on this board is the fact that
it does use dd+ power control for that
it is digital vrm for both the memory
and the CPU very very cool thing to have
we've also got a very unique cooling
solution on this part
so we've got the heatsink up here for
the CPU PWM we've got an additional
couple of heat sinks over here that are
gonna help us dissipate some more heat
and then finally we've got your standard
low profile heatsink on the Intel
chipset itself so that one actually
isn't cooling a whole lot but these
other guys are gonna be taking care of
most of the cooling which is going to be
our most of the heat which is going to
be produced by this so going back to the
board what else we got here we got mem
okay which increased as memory
compatibility allows you to get into the
bodice to configure things we've also
got an easy plug so this is additional
power for the board in the event that
you do need it this is particularly
necessary for boards that have that are
intended to have a ton of graphics cards
installed in them 24-pin power
connectors and it's ideal location along
the right-hand edge we've also got an e
PU button that's for power saving USB 3
front panel connector and it's ideal
location we've also got say 2 3 6
gigabit per second connectors these to
run off the Intel chipset these to run
off of a third-party Marvell chipset and
they also support Asus SSD caching
feature so remember x79 unlike z68 does
not natively support SSD caching caching
so asus has implemented that with a
third-party chipset these four are say 2
to 3 gigabit per second so you'll use
that for your lower performance or your
storage drives or whatever else the case
may be on the front we've got our front
panel connectors for your LEDs your
power button your reset button all that
good stuff we have an internal USB port
this is handy for you knows more like
server and workstation grade
applications so if you have for example
a storage device or something that
actually connects with one of these
internal ports and you don't want to run
it through a pass through out the back
of the case this is a very handy thing
to have two USB 2.0 ports onboard power
buttons so yes we still have those those
awesome enthusiast grade features even
though it is a workstation board asus
has really included everything here more
fans I'll point out all the fan
locations afterwards clear CMOS but that
is not hmm yep clear CMOS jumper TPU so
that is four that is more for
performance whereas the EPU is more for
energy efficiency front firewire and
we've already covered the PCIe slots so
a couple more things just want to
show you guys where all the fan
connectors are on this board because I
can often influence whether to go with a
particular board for a build whether it
has good access to your fans so we have
one two three four five six six pwm fan
connectors so that is uh let's see yeah
I'd say that's pretty good placement cuz
a lot of time you're gonna have a
chassis fan in the top that you got to
deal with you're gonna have a chassis
fan in the back you got to deal with you
might have a couple of cpu fans that you
want to plug in but if you got like a
big knock to a d14 cooler that deals
with your front fan and that deals with
sort of your either your front fan or
some other fan pretty well taken care of
as far as I'm concerned on the back of
the board we find just an additional
metal strip for cooling some PWM
components so that means a case like in
an Tek 1100 wouldn't be a bad idea
because it has some cooling that you can
direct at the back of the board for
additional well cooling let me just see
if there's anything I'm missing here
before we get too far into it so it does
support both four-way SLI and 4-way
crossfire it does have this is good
dual Intel Ethernet server grade LAN
ports so that means no third party
chipsets we are using the Intel Ethernet
ports and nothing else it also has an
LED a couple different LED buttons here
if you want to come closer has a couple
different LEDs on it I actually am NOT a
hundred percent sure where they are but
I know that one of them turns either
green blue or red to indicate whether
you're in power saving mode regular mode
or overclocking mode and then there's
also an additional LED set that yeah
hold on let me just find this guy AHA
indicates whether you have any errors
this one sweet so this doesn't happen to
me often but I've totally blamed me sup
guys let's do the IO so we've got our
ps2 keyboard and mouse ports dedicated
ports I don't know I'm old fashioned but
I still like them seven regular USB 2
ports this guy's compatible with isus
files flashback which allows you to
throw USB Drive with the read correct
BIOS file in there press this button and
that would even memory or CPU installed
you can flash the latest files very cool
optical audio out the dual Gigabit
Ethernet
dual Gigabit Ethernet by Intel firewire
2 USB 3.0 ports remember there's two
more supported from the internal header
as well as 7.1 analog audio out there's
also some cool BIOS features to go along
with this board including pressing f3 or
f12 to easily access your frequently
used functions as well as to take a
screenshot of your BIOS to send to
others to help them to achieve the same
level of performance that you have once
you've tweet things as much as you want
there's also fan expert Plus which is a
really cool way to manage all of these
fans that you can plug into the board
you can either set profiles or even
temperature curves so that means if your
temperatures go up the fans will go up
if you temperatures go down the fans
will spin down which is very very neat
this board also supports a high look
there's a label right there USB 3 boost
which is basically just a way of making
any USB 3 Drive perform a little bit
faster and USB 3 devices that support
you ASP significantly faster which is
cool as well so thank you for checking
out my unboxing your first look at the
p9 X 79 ws workstation board don't
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videos crazy Russian found the light
that lights up and tells us that the
everything is ok light this one right
here so blue so you can see we're
running a normal mode or as normal as
things can be with an Extreme Edition
and 32 gigs of mismatched memory
installed so we're just making sure that
everything's running ok with this board
before it goes into a high-end
workstation
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