Gadgetory

so finally time to take a look at the asrock x99 ex killer with USB 3.1 ladies and gentlemen welcome back to tech yes city this is brian coming back to you guys today with a review of the ex 99x killer this is their fatality gaming series motherboards and this time it's for the x99 line and it's kind of a refresh where they introduced USB 3.1 and now I've tested USB 3.1 I've also tested the onboard killer and their claims are actually legit so we'll get onto that later but first let's take a look at the motherboard and then we'll move on to like the BIOS the onboard audio and all that juicy stuff that comes loaded with this motherboard so starting from the top to the bottom of this motherboard we've got an ex 99 red heatsink covering a 12 phase vrm design which is actually an 8 + 4 phase power design with 8 phases are dedicated to the CPU 2 phase is dedicated for dims and another 2 phases are dedicated to another 4 dims of memory also at the top there you will find an 8 pin CPU connector which is out the way and then just besides that you'll have a 4 pin CPU connector and a 3 pin CPU connector and then besides that you've got a USB 2 port onboard the motherboard if you wish to use that now another thing I will mention about the vrm is that it does have 12 Kane itch con caps on board there they're Japanese made caps also 60 amp chokes and also a dual MOSFET end design so it's a very solid vrm I've been using it for months on the extreme 6 and it hasn't missed a beat and it stays cool at 4.2 gigahertz whenever I touch the heatsink on the heatsink there so moving a little bit further down the board here we've got a 24 pin ATX connector as well as two USB 3 connectors and a 3 pin chassis fan header there and then below that we've got 10 SATA 3 ports there as well 6 of these the first 6 down the bottom are dedicated to normal solder usage or you can put them in raid 0 105 the four above that you can only use them for normal usage so you can't put these into raid zero 105 just that in mind below that we've got a solder Express port there if you wish to use that though that will cut cut out v solder port if you wish to use that as well as if you wish to use an m2 solid drive I believe that will cancel out a solid port as well now besides that we've got a big heat sink there covering the platform chipset hub or formally known as the South Bridge and then we've got the dr. debug LED which is really good if you are having problems for instance overclocking if your computer's crashing if your keyboards not connecting properly to your computer and it's causing crashing and sometimes this dr. debug LED will help below that you've got your speaker head out there you've got your front panel power outputs and then you've got two buttons onboard one's dedicated with being a power button one's dedicated to being a reset button which can definitely come in handy and in my case it did since I don't use power buttons on there I just said just press that and then I wire my ps2 keyboard to turn on the computer just above that power and reset button is a HDD saver which they include the cable for though me and myself I do not use this and then besides that you have these chassis fans three pin and an additional chassis four pin they're quickly going on to the middle of the board however we've got a power fan there as well and then you've also got the auxilary four pin connector there to give your board extra power if you're doing things like two or three Way SLI so if you're in total you've got a total of six fan connectors there or chassis and CPU power connectors there which is really good I like to see that they've got a lot of these on the board so going back to the bottom of the board we've got two USB two outs there we've got a bar selection switch there which you actually have a dual bias and you can select which bias you want to use very handy then besides that you've got a manual clear CMOS connector there if you wish to do it the old-school method and then moving on besides that you have a TPM and thunderbolt connectivities there and then besides that you've got a comm port and then you've got your front board output there so just above the front audio out there we have as rocks purity sound - which features the realtek 1150 and I'm going to do a sound test and mic test for you guys later and I will say this onboard audio is impressive on the x99 killer so then moving on to the middle of the board here we do have three PCI 16 speed slots there and they all support PCI 3 3.0 now depending on your CPU whether it's a 5820k or the 59 30k or the 59 60 X you can either support to a SLI or 3-way SLI depending on your CPU going below that we've got two PCI Express one speed slots there and also besides that you've got an ultra m2 as well as a CMOS battery and then below that you've got a PCI mini there so all up you've got decent connectivity and we'll quickly move on now lastly to the back of the board so looking at the back of the board here we've got two USB to ports there also one of these is the fatality Mouse port which you can manually set the polling rate from 125 Hertz all the way up to a thousand Hertz even if you've got an old-school Mouse and you can actually use this for your keyboard as well so keep that in mind very good feature there ps2 port there if you want to use a ps2 keyboard like I do below that you have a clear CMOS button which is very handy I love the implementation of this below that you've got the new USB 3.1 C connector which you can put it in any way you like below that you've got the solder Express port there then below that you've got two USB 3 ports and the killer on board and IC and now we're gonna stop quickly at the killer there because this is a legitimate solution the killer I've tested this in the past we're gonna talk about it a little bit later but it actually is a legit solution if you are sharing your internet below that you've got the Intel ni C which is pretty much one of the best on board in ICS at the moment the i-21 8v then you've also got another 2 USB 3 ports there below that you've got your syrup onboard audio solution there which supports 7.1 surround sound as well as having an optical out and you've got your line in mic in and your standard stereo out there as well which I actually take advantage of all bottom three ports there whoo I hope you guys are still with me because asrock include a USB 3.1 add-on card there's now this card features 2 USB 3.1 connectors and unfortunately it takes up a PCI four-speed slot and since you only get to one speed slots in 3/16 speed slots this will unfortunately have to take up a 16 speed slot if you wish to use it now this could be a problem for someone who got this motherboard with intentions for 3-way SLI so a little bit of a bummer there but nonetheless most people it wouldn't be a problem for so I just thought I'd put that out there so you guys consider the card also has an auxilary power port there if it is juicing too much power from the motherboard anyway that being said let's move on now to a look at the BIOS so let's take a look at the asrock UEFI x99 fatality bios here and it mainly differs from the extreme 6 in that it's red and black so cosmetically there's a little difference there and basically you've still got that same awesome BIOS that you had on the extreme 6 very intuitive very well has all the settings that I would need personally from a boss and then some so you can see here I've configured my 5820k for a basic 4.2 gig overclock that's pretty much the sweet spot on my CPU and this board does it at around 1.2 volts so I can change all the voltages there some reason I find that the override mode on as wrong boards and this is in the past on the z77 as well it works really well in practice it keeps your voltage fixed but when it enters the initial C state still gives you the power savings so it's very interesting how they've done that anyway this is the next part here you've got more settings there which you can change and then after you're done with that you can save you use a default and load it so you've got a total of five years of profiles there which is ample enough for me anyway so here you've got more settings here where you can go into and set different settings there you've also got the chipset settings you can actually manually set the link speeds on the PCI Express Lanes there I've set my first 16 speed slot death for generation 3 that's PCIe 3 and also on the I think it is the ACP I so yeah I can also set my ps2 to keyboard power on which I do since it's an open testbed but not a thing that's worth mentioning in this boss is the fantastic tuning software here this is actually really good and I do take advantage of so my CPU one fan you can see here I've actually got a custom profile in here so that it's as quiet as it can go when the CPU is under 50 degrees actually I might just manually set that to 50 degrees but you can see here so you can set it to 50 degrees up until 50 degrees it'll stay at 20% and so to be very quiet when I'm just browsing the web talking on skype whatnot my fans will stay quiet especially on my CPU fan which is the noisiest fan here at the moment though when it starts when I start rendering a video and stuff like that I don't want any risks of my computer crashing so you see here as soon as it gets close to 75 degrees bang the fans go into full speed so that's that you can apply that you can also do that on the chassis fans and you can monitor the motherboard and CPU so really good implementation there you've also got your boot options there fastboot I've got that enabled still allows me to enter the BIOS but it still gives me a speed up time there logos you can disable that if you want to I don't really see it as my monitors are direct from the GPU anyway Save Changes negative that's the boss really good let's move on now to a sound test and a mic test for you guys so let's quickly talk about the fatalities onboard audio solution and now just like the extreme six it's got the purity sound too and it's an amazing onboard audio solution it's pretty much the best onboard audio solution you can get out there at the moment the clarity of the audio coming out of this thing is really good like I just finished listening to the old school rock album the police and it was man I was impressed on my HD 595 so that was just it was really good I could hear all the detail there one thing I will point out those the crosstalk levels are not as good as something like say for instance and as easier 7k decane combo but that's thing costs like $100 anyway on its own the fact is for an onboard motherboard solution this audio is really good to boot the volume levels are there the clarity is there also as well the crosstalk is still pretty good on that note as well the mic in and the line in deserve a good worthy mention as well the mic and I'm testing it for you guys now I'm actually recording at a level of 50 with plus 20 DP with noise suppression turned off as I believed reduces the quality of voice if you're that turned on you probably already know your voice starts to sound like you're speaking through a tin can so if I can't always like to turn this off and the fact is this is pretty much introducing no noise at these levels which is really good I like it when the board's got a strong mic input nothing is I will say as well I like it when the board's got a strong line in as well so this when I put the mic preamp that I use into the line-in I can turn that all the way up to 100 and we'll introduce no noise as well unlike the for instance the x99 UD 4 which I reviewed which had a pretty lackluster on world audio solution introducing noise on the line in and the crosstalk was horrendous on the audio out so anyway let's move on now to a conclusion and we'll talk about USB 3.1 as well so let's go we talked about performance and power consumption and in regards to performance this motherboard performs exactly like all the other x99 boards in other words you're not going to get a real performance gain from using this motherboard as opposed to another motherboard and vice versa also when regards to power consumption when we look at the figures here this x99 acts killer performs just like the extreme 6 did which performs very similar to the msi x99s li+ the gigabyte you default was beating the other three motherboards the that motherboard has a plethora of problems in its own also I forgot to mention included with this motherboard is a two-way and 3-way SLI or Xfire connector as well as a USB 3.1 add-on card which gives you those two extra 3.1 a slots there and also besides that you get full black side of three cables included with this motherboard and you also get that HDD saver cable as well also I forgot to mention that asrock make a thing of a SD protection implemented into their motherboards as well which could become useful especially on the N IC liners might me personally I have had a ni C blowout during a lightning storm so I like that that's added in there whether I can test this or not I mean I can't artificially produce a lightning bolt so I'm just gonna trust asrock on this one so when all's said and done the asrock x99 ex killer is one phenomenal ball and I'm gonna keep repeating that because as rock have got it right with their x99 line now cosmetically I'd say they do need to touch things up especially those little clips I'd like to see them color code them both red and black to match the board and I've said this in the past but besides that when you buy an AZ rock board what you're getting is features functions and utility first besides cosmetics and that's what I look for when I get a motherboard I want to know does it have a solid vrm does it have a good onboard audio solution does it have a good anti C on board and the curtain the answer to all these questions is yes not only does it have a good vrn it's got a really phenomenally good vrm on board you've also got some of the best onboard audio I've ever heard even then I thought the mic in on the fatality was even better than the extreme six and that's like the best mic in port I'd heard up until that date so good job on good job on that as rock I really noticed these little things and it makes a difference when you're improving your product and in turn improving your brand image not besides besides that we've also got the fatality and the killer ni C's onboard which are two are the best in their own right I'd say the Intel's really good if you don't have anyone else using your internet connection and then the killer would be good if you're in a location where you've got to use the shared internet connection though from an anal-retentive perspective I would say the Intel would be a little bit better if you have no one using your internet though for what it's worth probably doesn't make much of a difference anyway but all in said and done also one other thing that I will point out is that the USB 3.1 card takes up a four-speed slot so essentially if you want to use USB 3.1 then you'll only have to 16 speed slots to use for SLI and other purposes so that's a little bit of a bummer there but I mean it can't be helped I mean I guess the USB 3.1 needs a 4-speed slot as opposed to one speed slot and I'm sure not many people would be actually using 3-way SLI anyway even for professionals and before we go we'll quickly talk about pricing I think you can get this board for a little bit over $300 though if you don't need the USB 3.1 and me personally I'm not in a position to take advantage of it I just go with the original fatality killer series which will save you around 50 or $60 if you're in Australia eh I can only find the asrock 9x 99 X M version which is $329 AUD which at that price is actually a really good deal so with this motherboard you're pretty much getting a top-of-the-line motherboard I can't think of anything that I would add in besides those little cosmetic things I think asrock have got it right on every department here and I really like what they've done with their motherboards so one of the guys if you have any questions or comments about the x99 X killer then drop a comment in the comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can and if you like this video then please give it a thumbs up and if you want you can check me out on social media and whatnot and I'll catch you in another tech review very soon peace out for now bye