ASUS P9X79 Pro i7 Gaming Motherboard - The rock star amongst motherboards

 

 

The P9X79 Pro i7 Gaming Motherboard, as claimed by a handful of industry experts, is a deserving candidate for being labeled as a next generation, state-of-the art board. However, with that, many of you might get one or two points to frown upon as well-- for example being an entirely updated board means you won’t be getting any PCI slots at all, and just a pair of PCI Express X1 slots (one of those are definitely bound to be occupied by a graphic card)

 

 

The initial feedback on the P9X79 Pro has been so far more on the positive side, despite being priced at a rather hefty amount. Now, speaking of the high-price, it was not entirely unexpected to see this new offering from ASUS coming up with a-- well, let’s say not too much of a pocket-friendly price tag-- after all, the product has been already accepted by the industry as a top-of-the-shelf board for a top-of-the-shelf processor.

 

Look-wise, the P9X79 Pro is definitely a standout amongst all its rivals. Yes-- with its blue and black color scheme, the product is definitely one of those few non-ROG (republic of gamers) motherboards that can boast off being something we would rather term as an “eye-candy”.

 

 

However, you may find it a bit unpleasing to see the CPU socket area being a little over crowded. There are number of solid capacitors placed towards right of the LGA2011 socket. But then, the most unique thing about the product is its DIMM slots.

The ASUS P9X79 Pro brings along with it four PCI Express x16 slots, as well as both three way Scalable Link Interface (SLI) and the Quad GPU Cross Fire X. Apart from that, the product also boasts off having  four Serial ATA2, four Serial ATA3 as well as a pair of eSATA ports. And when it comes to USB slots, the P9X79 Pro comes equipped with four high-speed USB3.0 and six USB 2.0 interface, in addition to which there are three more USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 headers.

 

 

As per tests carried out in a number of labs all around the world, the ASUS P9X79 has a read speed of 228 Mbps, and a write speed of 236.5 Mbps-- significantly faster than the likes of ASUS Sabertooth X58.

 

So far the memory aspect is concerned, the product features one monster of an 8-memory slot that supports upto 64 GB of DDR3 RAM. For your convenience, ASUS also made sure that all the slots are color coded in a proper way, thus leaving no room for any confusion whatsoever!

 

Though there is only pair of PCI Express x1 slots, you can always utilize the PCI Express x16 slots to compensate for that.

 

 

Another exciting feature that makes the product highly attractive despite its high-end price is its sheer ability to carry out SSD Caching. Since this feature is not available via the chipset, ASUS came up with its own solution to resolve the issue. P9X79 Pro exploits the Marvell 88SE9128 SATA III controller in order to offer you the advantage of SSD caching. You can enable the feature by simply incorporating a solid state drive along with the ASUS AI Suite II. The set up process for this is pretty simple- requires only a click on the mouse.

 

 

One unique and pretty handy aspect of the products is its easy setup process. The power and reset buttons are located right on the board. In addition there is a numeric LED display too which allows you to have a look at the status messages, as well as a CMOS reset switch that lets you know immediately if something goes wrong.

 

 

And when it come to the Basic-Input-Output-System, the P9X79 Pro i7 Gaming Motherboard carries in it an UEFI BIOS, equipped with a GUI (graphical user interface)-- thus allowing you to set up and control BIOS settings using your mouse too.

 

The board is perfectly comfortable with powerful processors such as the Intel Core i7 3960X with 4.8 GHz clockspeed. The only drawback we noticed was that- it is not entirely impossible to have a bit of issues with the cooling aspect of the product, especially with the pair of processor fan headers, along with all 4 of the system fan headers scattered all around the board.

 

 

The power consumption of the board also stands fairly low- at least compared to a lot of products of its class. At idle, the P9X79 Pro draws no more than 97 watt of power-- marginally less than the standard 100 watt mark.

 

Overall, the performance level of ASUS P9X79 Pro i7 Gaming Motherboard can be termed as quite satisfactory. Many critics may claim that with a hefty price-tag that accompanies the product, there was still room for ASUS to make the product more advanced and feature-rich. But then, keeping in mind how this is the only-of-its-kind product floating around in the market at present, the price factor is quite understandably a bit more on the higher side.

 

 

With the appearance of other similar products in the market from other vendors, the price of the P9X79 Pro is also bound to lower.

 

To conclude with, if you are on the hunt for a top-of-the-shelf motherboard, equipped with new-age sophisticated technology and a string of advanced features, you should not be too much bothered about the hefty amount you will need to spend to include the ASUS P9X79 Pro in your tech inventory. Do we recommend the product? Obviously-- go for it!.

 

You can find a wide range of world-class desktop PCs based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E Series CPUs with latest software and hardware at Evetech. Power users, gamers and digital media enthusiasts can find customized PC systems fitted with Intel Core i7 3960X and Core i7 3930K Unclocked Hexa Core processors at Evetech.co.za with best price in South Africa.