ASRock X99 Extreme3 Is An Affordable Choice For Linux Users

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ASRock X99 Extreme3 Is An Affordable Choice For Linux Users

For those in the market for an LGA-2011v3 motherboard this holiday shopping season, a very reasonable and affordable choice is the ASRock X99 Extreme3. For just over $200 USD you can get this DDR4-3000+ motherboard that supports Thunderbolt, ten Serial ATA 3.0 ports, 18-core Xeon processors, three PCI Express x16 slots, and numerous other connections for offering a feature-packaged motherboard at a modest price compared to other LGA-2011v3 motherboards.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=21260

[grndzro]

I'v been running ~350w through my cheap ass Asrock mobo /w aftermarket VRM sinks for 4 years now with no problems.
Will definately make my next build Asrock.

After they revamped to match quality with competitors in software and hardware there should be no reason not to save a few dollars by going with Asrock.

[emblemparade]

"Affordable" is all relative ... if you're going Haswell-E/X99, you have no options under $200. They're all high-end motherboards, at least for now. When DDR4 starts falling in price it might start making sense to produce budget X99 boards. For now, it's still quite a premium over Haswell.

By the way, for only a bit more money you can jump to the ASRock Fatal1ty board. The differences from the Extreme3 are not big, but at that price point, you might as well get the best.

[Brane215]

For me, whole point of going for 2011-3 MoBo is 8 memory slots. Getting "short" 4 slot version totally misses the point - you just pay quite a sum for a board with bunch of stuff you don't usually need.

Why do you need bazillion USB ports or 10 SATA ?

Having option of having plenty of RAM slots aint bad. I can always use more RAM and with many slots I can afford to go for smaller sticks in larger qty.

[hetzbh]

cute board, but same issues

As a person who has few ASRock boards for AMD processor, I see that with Intel processor version - it still got those same issues:

* Still going on with Horizontal SATA ports? try sticking 4-5 disks on the case and then try to add another disk after the board is in the case. Good luck with all those fiddling.
* E5, i7 processors support 8 memory slots, why not just stick a compatible chipset and 8 memory slots?
* Molex connector in the middle of the board? Most of the new PSU's today skip the Molex connector in favor of SATA power ports and 6-8 pins combo's (one for the motherboard, 1-2 for the GPU). Whats this Molex connector job actually? replace the power port on the GPU and connect from the board?

[stiiixy]

"Affordable" is all relative ... if you're going Haswell-E/X99, you have no options under $200. They're all high-end motherboards, at least for now. When DDR4 starts falling in price it might start making sense to produce budget X99 boards. For now, it's still quite a premium over Haswell.

By the way, for only a bit more money you can jump to the ASRock Fatal1ty board. The differences from the Extreme3 are not big, but at that price point, you might as well get the best.

I've a feeling X99 specifically will be old hat by the time DDR4 becomes 'reasonably' (each to their own on reasonable, ay? My brother's happy now. Me, I can wait) priced. Despite having the spec out for years on DD4, there's always going to be that artificial hype-market price inflation. And why shouldn't there be? People will payh for it, you'd be nuts NOT to do it as a retailer, manufacturer etc. I daresay X1099 and possibly x1199 will be out before the prices start dropping again to those reasonable prices, obviously excepting earthquakes, invasions by foreign forces and the price of sushi being affect by buttefly's in Belgium.

I'm not even sure what DDR4 really brings to the table really except slightly lower power ratings and *official* speed ratings that DDR3's had for years. Possibly they held out to make sure they could exceed those ratings officialy. I'm jsut making shit up now =P Oh, I was the whole time =D

[stiiixy]

For me, whole point of going for 2011-3 MoBo is 8 memory slots. Getting "short" 4 slot version totally misses the point - you just pay quite a sum for a board with bunch of stuff you don't usually need.

Why do you need bazillion USB ports or 10 SATA ?

Having option of having plenty of RAM slots aint bad. I can always use more RAM and with many slots I can afford to go for smaller sticks in larger qty.

Exactly (and singularly, actually) why I didn't get this for my brother. We want a bit of future proofing, and four slots is PATHETIC when everyone else is offering 8.

But the Extreme4 is there to cover it. For 40 dorra more =O


Michael
Can you try using 'aluminium'? Only Yanks use 'aluminum'.....just try it =D

[hoohoo]

How can a board with a pair of x16 and single x4 slots support quad-Crossfire or quad-SLI?

Agree with comments above about 4 DIMM slots vs 8 DIMM slots. IMHO the main reason to go S2011 is more RAM - top end S1150 CPUs are close enough to top end S2011 CPUs qua performance to make any other reason moot.

[mgwenz]

" ...tested the motherboard with Fedora 21 and Ubuntu 14.10..."

Were the distro installers booted in UEFI mode? I am curious as the Extreme 4 model could not boot the Fedora 20 nor 21 installation media in UEFI, secure boot on and off, but everything else I have tried including Ubuntu 14.10 fires up in UEFI mode without issue.
Even tried installing Fedora 21 in BIOS mode and converting to UEFI later, with the same result.

Am trying to determine if it is ASRock's UEFI implementation which is the issue, or otherwise, with respect to Fedora.

[WilliamJeremiah]

Got any more "spare" 5960X chips lying around, you need to get shed of ?