The X99 board rumors.

[Eric Bowen]

There are rumors and reviews out now that some X99 boards are burning. Understand the new X99 boards have allot of new settings that many will likely not be ware of. Also the XMP profiles for DDR4 ram right now are not conservative at all and really not what would be recommended especially for full 8 stick populations. These really need to be manually modified if you use them which means you need to know what to set them to. I suspect those XMP profiles are likely causing the issues some are running into. If you dont know what to change the XMP values to then just use the base ram profiles and speed. There always can be system boards that fail or production runs with an issue. However the X99 boards have some very specific configuration points or gotchas that if your not aware of, can cause problems. The ram and VR are also key points for cooling. Even at 1.25V the DDR4 is getting hot. The VR is key to maintaining stability on the ram as well as making sure you dont see your board catch on fire. I suspect some are not cooling the VR area enough and the heat is throwing the voltage/resistance off which can eventually lead to component failure. Overall what I am saying is more often than not these issues are due to miss configuration versus hardware design flaws. As of right now we have seen 0 issues with any of the Asus Deluxe boards that are reported online. That includes both weeks of testing and new builds.

 

[Jason Osterday]

Thanks for heads up Eric. Which Deluxe flavor are you guys favoring at the moment?

 

[Eric Bowen]

The Asus X99-Deluxe.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Vendors are finally officially showing the ASUS X99-E WS board for purchase and it seems to be priced in line with the Rampage V board. $471 from Provantage at the moment with an approximate 3+ week wait. I'm supposed to have mine next week... We'll see. I need to flesh out the rest of my build once I know it's coming. I'll have to re-order RAM since I sold the RAM I already bought, not wanting to keep holding it past my return period.

As far as I can tell, the credible reports of melt-down on the X99 boards seem to be entirely related to RAM and improper voltage regulation. The DDR4 out there right now is just not up to snuff (IMO) for what people want to do with it, nor what these new motherboards are allowing us to try and do with it. In the face of pressure from the performance gaming PC crowd, vendors like ASUS are not going to "cripple" the motherboard options by restricting voltage and RAM clocks into a conservatively safe range. Doesn't help when all the > 2133MHz DDR4 modules on the market are effectively over clocked and I see enough regular reports of many 2400 and 2600 MHz modules that can't actually perform at their advertised speeds.

So far, my build is going to be the X99-E motherboard w/ 8-core 3GHz i7 CPU destined for a 4+GHz over clock. 64GB RAM @ 2400MHz+, dual Titan Black GPUs.... Need to pick up an SSD or two decide which case to throw this in, etc.. Should be a nice desktop system for a good bit under $5K that can run most everything well.

 

[Jason Osterday]

Anyone utilizing Samsung XP 941's with the onboard M2 interface or M2 PCIe cards? Seems like a convenient route to 1000+MB/s.

 

[Eric Bowen]

Havent tested those yet. I will be testing the new Intel PCI-E once I am done with the 900 series benchmarks.

BTW I completely agree with you Jeff. The CPU strap and base clock frequency being used on the XMP profiles are likely causing this issue especially if the power settings effecting those are left to auto. I have no idea why they are using this configuration in their profiles. Not a very wise move.

 

[Danko Dolch]

Anyone utilizing Samsung XP 941's with the onboard M2 interface or M2 PCIe cards? Seems like a convenient route to 1000+MB/s.

hmm - cant find a 1TB version available in shops... but Apple is using them in Macbook Pros right?

--> Would be even better to use a NVMe SSD to get higher IO Ops... but they arn't available too for end users...


@Jeff: Case suggestion for the Asus X99WS -> silverstone tj07b-w - nice design, good build quality, lots of space CEB form factor... ;-)
RAM: what brand and type of modules would be optimal for a 64GB config?

 

[Jason Osterday]

To my knowledge Samsung never released a 1TB XP941 outside of the Mac stuff which has a different key pattern sadly.

The Intel NVM drives look promising but will have a hefty price tag. The OCZ's have now dropped to nearly $1K for 960GB. They arent built on NVM architecture though. I'd be interested to see barefeats do a PCIe SSD showdown of the Intel, OCZ, Samsung and Plextor. Taking into consideration price, perf, scalability, reliability, form factor and so forth since this newer SSD tech isn't exactly apples to apples.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

X99-E WS motherboard is in stock at NewEgg today. Their price is high at $529, but they actually have them ready to ship.

@Danko, that Silverstone case is one I've been considering. I have a few extra Corsair and Thermaltake cases around here too that will fit CEB boards, I may just use one of those. I guess I'll figure that out. For RAM, I'm getting G.Skill RipJaws PC4-24000 rated at 3GHz. 8 x 8GB. Expensive stuff. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Danko Dolch]

X99-E WS motherboard is in stock at NewEgg today. Their price is high at $529, but they actually have them ready to ship.

@Danko, that Silverstone case is one I've been considering. I have a few extra Corsair and Thermaltake cases around here too that will fit CEB boards, I may just use one of those. I guess I'll figure that out. For RAM, I'm getting G.Skill RipJaws PC4-24000 rated at 3GHz. 8 x 8GB. Expensive stuff. We'll see how it goes.

Hi Jeff,

thanks for the RAM tipp - currently not in stock and for just about 1100,00 EUR on preorder - Outch ;-)

I hope that the large CPU cache + high bandwidth DDR4 will speed up things. With my good old i7 machines I have often the situation that I have no CPU- or IO-load but the processing will take much time...

Currently I've to wait for the Asus X99 WS to become available in shops - no mobo no new machine :-(

Danko

 

[Jason Osterday]

I feel like someone should start an X99 thread so that we can all gab about the builds and spitball stuff. I can already sense the popularity building as WS boards and Ram shape up, along with 980GTX's restocking of course.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I feel like someone should start an X99 thread so that we can all gab about the builds and spitball stuff. I can already sense the popularity building as WS boards and Ram shape up, along with 980GTX's restocking of course.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

 

[aemilia scott]

Hi guys. I'm new to this hardware game, and unfortunately I have to get myself up this learning curve extremely quickly to build a system that will finish my next film. So if I'm heavily using Premiere and DaVinci, should I be looking at an x99 motherboard with newest i7 5XXX processor, or something allowing dual socket Xeon CPUs, like the ASUS Z9PE-DE WS?

Thanks, gents.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Hi guys. I'm new to this hardware game, and unfortunately I have to get myself up this learning curve extremely quickly to build a system that will finish my next film. So if I'm heavily using Premiere and DaVinci, should I be looking at an x99 motherboard with newest i7 5XXX processor, or something allowing dual socket Xeon CPUs, like the ASUS Z9PE-DE WS?

Thanks, gents.

I'm waiting for an answer on roughly this same question here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?122755-Resolve-vs-PP-Multicore-support

 

[Zac Gordon]

I got my asus x99 e-ws board today. though i am in australia and ordered it a month ago....working on my build atm.. pretty sure i am going along the lines of..

5960x
asus x99 e-ws
64gb ddr4 ram
Ax1200i psu
(still undecided on what gpu's..either 3x 780ti sc // 2x 980 or wait for 980ti)
2x ssd raid 0 offset timing OS
2x ssd raid 0 offset timing cache
4x ssd raid 0 offset timing scratch
6x HDD 2tb WD RE raid 5 for main drive
(all these drives will be hot swapable on the front of the case with LED showing drive health via "chenbro sk33502")
adaptec raid card
2x sxpc rx480 v3 radiator
2x d5 pumps and res all that other water stuff
Most like going caselabs case to fit everything in...."Magnum TH10A" ...seems to be the best case to fit everything in and still be expandable in regards to HDD's later on down the track if i want to add more. 900D just wont fit the hdd's i want..
I probably forgot stuff.. but yeah.. that will give you a basic idea

 

[aemilia scott]

Tom,

Thanks so much for the lead. I'm looking at that forum now!

Aemilia