Asus P9X79-E WS Ultimate X79 Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
Asus P9X79-E WS Ultimate X79 Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
2013-09-27
Corsair RM series power supplies are
optimized for silent operation click now
to learn more welcome to my unboxing of
a product that gets me personally
extremely excited
more so than an ROG board or a regular
motherboard definitely this is the p9 X
79 e
WS so this is an updated version of the
p9 x 79 WSHH WSHH is for workstation
which is not to say that this board is
not going to be a highly capable
overclocker or able to run a highly
capable gaming machine it just means
that it goes beyond that - more like
workstation or even you know light home
server grade validation and componentry
so on the front you're going to find the
usual core i7 extreme and nvidia sli &
ambu crossfire x badges and all that
stuff but whoa hold on a minute what's
this Xeon Phi support yeah you can chuck
a Xeon in here in ECC memory Nvidia
Tesla support is actually validated to
run with nvidia tesla compute cards
that's something you're not going to
find on your typical run-of-the-mill
hundred dollar motherboard not only that
but check this out guys so there's a
little badge right there you can go have
a look at while I open up the box
four-way SLI or crossfire at a 16 X link
speed now there is some you know of
course it takes some funny business to
make that happen with respect to you
know plx switches or whatever else but
if you want four cards running at 60
texts then this is pretty much the only
way to go
it's got full support for the latest Ivy
bridge-e processors on the LGA 2011
platform it's also got support for the
older LGA 2011 sandy bridge-e based
processor so anything with that fits in
an LGA 2011 socket you can pretty much
put in here and let's go ahead and
spread out all the accessories because
it comes with absolutely everything so
four-way SLI bridge right there nice
sexy black four-way SLI bridge for our
rather 3-way SLI bridge right there it
also comes with check this out firewire
header and USB 2.0
so just in case you still need firewire
it's like it's got everything I Oh
shield is right there
then we've got regular sli bridge wish
that was black but I guess I mean or
whatever it's not really targeted
directly at gamers eight SATA cables so
four of them are straight for the more
right angle actually sorry two more SATA
cables as well as a molex to dual say to
adapter haven't seen one of these
included with one of their boards in a
while and check this out a serial port
riser so you can go ahead and throw that
in one of your extra PCI slots and a DVD
and Q connectors and a QuickStart users
guide or user's guide whatever you want
to call it so who is this motherboard
for if it can overclock and it can gain
but it's validated with Tesla's and all
this stuff well the answer is pretty
much anyone particularly people like me
where you're doing video editing and you
have some pretty exotic weird hardware
in what would otherwise be considered a
gaming rig so I'm running a graphics
card which happens to be a dual GPU
graphics card so sometimes there's
compatibility issues there I am running
a high-end RAID controller so it's an
LSI 9268 I with eight SSDs on it so I
need maximum throughput to my card
I need compatibility which I'm not
getting with my current gigabyte x79 su
p5 and I could I was running a 10
gigabit network card so that's another
thing that might be kind of a a weird
thing internally here we run quad rolls
all that kind of stuff you might also
want to run a high-end sound card it's
going to be validated it's going to
actually work so let's go let's move
into what they've actually improved with
the EWS so they've improved the power
delivery it's got their latest digital
power for both the CPU as well as the
memory they've also got a newly updated
UEFI so of course full support for Ivy
bridge-e the xeon base cpus remember
those are required for ECC memory
support so if you do want to run ECC ram
which is basically a more stable
reliable memory particularly for high
capacity configurations it has the same
overclocking options as you'd find on
any other board but because of the
quality of the components it's going to
probably do better than most of the
other boards with the exception of
probably the x79 deluxe as well as the
rampage 4 black
just because those ones are really tuned
and tweaked for ivy bridge-e now there's
some other updated stuff as well the
dual Intel Ethernet solution is probably
mostly geared towards the pro users but
basically it's two to ten series
controllers that offer better throughput
lower CPU utilization as well as some
more you know more pro grade controller
options so you mies for things like
virtual machines for example let's cover
the layout so what you may or may not
have noticed about this board is it's a
little bit on the wider side and it has
some of the most complete IO that you
will ever see there's seven full PCI
Express slots there are ten SATA
connectors there is pretty much
everything you could possibly imagine
there's a USB port built-in to the
bottom right hand of the board this can
be used for things like encryption keys
that would normally be just permanently
plugged into the system unless you
wanted to remove them all that kind of
really cool stuff you've got your aping
CPU connector and it's ideal location
along the top left you've got some of
the cooling for that advanced vrm over
here and then there's actually a heat
pipe that connects it to a secondary set
of sort of heatsink fins over here that
allows you to dissipate some additional
heat with the incidental airflow that's
going to come from your CPU cooling
solution so this is also connected via a
heat pipe to this massive sort of I
guess block of metal down here hard to
call it a heat sink which is then
connected by heat pipe to this guy right
here so cooling is actually spread out a
fair bit on the board you've got eight
ddr3 memory slots so these are going to
be running at higher speeds than what
you'd 'a' seen on the older board
particularly because Ivy bridge-e CPUs
have a stronger memory controller than
sandy bridge-e CPUs the 24 pin
connectors in its ideal location along
the right-hand edge you still got things
like on-board power and reset buttons as
well as there
memo okay button which allows you to
boot even with sort of weird memory
configurations gives you a chance to
actually configure them it has an EP you
switch over here as well as it's USB 3
front panel header and it's ideal
location along the right-hand edge
although I'd like to see a right-angle
connector if I could have one you've got
to say 2 3 6 gigabit per second and 4
SATA 2 3 gigabit per second can
running off the Intel chipset and four
SATA 3 6 gigabit per second connectors
running off of an updated controller
that asus is added to this board that
has support for their new SSD caching -
which allows you to use an unlimited
size SSD to cache your mechanical
volumes remember they do have to all be
plugged into the same controller versus
intel's rst technology that limits you
to a 60 gig SSD on board post readout
onboard front panel connectors which of
course you have I explained the USB port
here before front USB to just one header
for that front firewire as well as that
serial front panel audio and your TPU
switch so that's for optimizing for
performance as opposed to EPU which is
more about optimizing for power
efficiency now let's get into that PCI
Express configuration so all the blue
slots are capable of running at full 16
X speed even with all of them populated
so if you were running a four-way
graphics card configuration you would
plug into all the blue ones this top
blue one runs at 16x regardless but the
other blue and black ones will split
into 8x8 x mode once you start to
populate them so the black ones only run
at 8x the 16 ones run at 16x which is
pretty fast now if you were to populate
all those cards and you weren't to plug
in any auxiliary power you would
actually have a very good chance of
burning out your 24-pin connector over
here because they particularly high draw
graphics cards and things like that
draw power not only from the connectors
that are plugged directly into them but
also from the slot so you're going to
want to plug in this 6 pin PCI II
connector right here if you've got any
more than probably about to high draw
cards plugged into these PCI Express
slots that's going to make sure that you
don't burn out your board which is going
to be a big problem for you when we move
around to the back of the board we find
out why there weren't any USB 2.0
headers because there's 10 USB 2 ports
on the back a ps2 keyboard mouse combo
port USB BIOS flash back this is handy
because even if you brick the board in
the middle of a flash you can usually
restore it optical audio out those dual
Intel Gigabit Ethernet controllers as
well as USB 3 and I yes dual eSATA 6
gigabit per second so that is fast eSATA
7.1 audio out and
I mean realistically what do you use
something like this for for me extremely
high-end gaming rig with weird hardware
in it maybe you're someone who uses I
don't know a video capture device in
order to run like a really high-end
camera for your game stream or whatever
else you might want to do with it that
that is who I see this being a board for
or if you're looking to build something
like a workstation that is going to be
running you know firegl cards or quad
rows or Tesla's or you know quad Gigabit
Ethernet NICs or any of those kinds of
things that require not only the
compatibility that is validated for but
also the throughput because if you plug
some of these cards into you know slots
that might look like 16x slots on
regular consumer boards but are actually
running at 8x or 4x or whatever speed
they're running at you might not get the
maximum performance that you should be
able to achieve with that card so we're
going to be using this board for an
upcoming ultimate build guide that'll be
sort of what we'd consider to be the
ultimate video editing rig and I'm
extremely excited about that so I think
that pretty much wraps it up thank you
for checking me out my unboxing of the P
9x 79 e deluxe did I say deluxe ws it's
certainly you know deluxe enough for you
know from my perspective don't forget to
like the video if you liked it dislike
it if you disliked it and leave a
comment letting us know what you thought
about the video if you had some feelings
that just can't be expressed with a
thumbs up or a thumbs down
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.