Last month on July 13th Asrock announced a new upcoming motherboard that they described as “A King-Sized Performer With Luxurious Components” and that board was of course the X79 Extreme11. The boards key features are without question the dual PLX PEX 8747 bridges supporting 4-Way SLI/CrossFireX along with the LSI SAS 2308 controller offering eight SAS/SATA3 ports.

Although only officially announced last month we have been aware of the Asrock X79 Extreme11 and it has been a product that we have been eagerly awaiting. Having recently released the highly impressive Fatal1ty X79 Champion we were left wanting even more and it looks like Asrock has delivered…

“Although the Fatal1ty X79 Champion looks to be one of the best motherboards money can buy, we believe a better X79 board may yet to be released. Asrock recently took the covers off their upcoming X79 Extreme11, which looks as though it could be the ultimate X79 motherboard offering considerably more gear onboard than anything currently available.”

Of course more gear means a greater price and with the Fatal1ty X79 Champion already commanding a $370 price tag we shuddered to think what the X79 Extreme11 might cost. For reference we have the EVGA X79 Classified at $450 and that board features less than half the amount of SATA ports and an inferior PCI Express configuration.

Keeping that in mind, potential buyers should brace themselves as Asrock has slapped a $600 price tag on the X79 Extreme11. Yet despite the extreme price tag we believe the Asrock X79 Extreme11 could actually be a bargain, depending on the user’s needs...

If you compare the X79's features to the older X58/ICH10R chipset combination, you will note that after 3 years very little has changed. Essentially you get two extra USB ports, two additional PCIe x1 lanes and a pair of SATA 6Gb/s port upgrades.

As a result it has never been more important for motherboard manufacturers to include additional features and this is exactly what Asrock has done with the X79 Extreme11, making it one of the most feature-packed X79 motherboards available.

Starting with the boards multi-GPU support there are seven PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots and four are wired for the full x16 bandwidth. Each of these four slots is separated by a x16 slot wired for x8 bandwidth meaning it is possible to run 4-Way SLI or 4-Way CrossFireX with all cards using x16 bandwidth. This has been achieved by using a pair of PLX PEX8747 bridges.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 has eight DIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM. Using the chipset's quad-channel memory architecture, it supports frequencies of 1866, 1600, 1333 and 1066MHz, while 2400 and 2133MHz are possible with overclocking -- no different than you'll find on most X79 motherboards.

Whereas the X79 chipset provides six SATA ports (two 6Gb/s), Asrock has included an additional LSI 6Gb/s controller for another eight ports: the LSI SAS2308 PCIe 3.0 controller provides eight SAS2/SATA3 6Gb/s ports supporting RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 1E and RAID 10), NCQ and "Hot Plug" functions.

This is a seriously impressive solution implemented by Asrock and it makes the X79 Extreme11 the most advanced desktop motherboard we have ever seen in terms of storage capabilities. Accompanying the staggering fourteen onboard SATA ports are a pair of eSATA ports on the boards I/O panel.

Network connectivity comes from two Broadcom BCM57781 controllers, which support Wake-On-LAN, Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az and Teaming. As impressive as the boards networking configuration is we were also excited by Asrock’s decision to use the Creative Sound Core3D audio solution. The Core3D audio supports THX TruStudio PRO, CrystalVoice, EAX 5.0 and full Blu-ray Profile 2.0 Audio Decoder Support.

Asrock has tasked a pair of Texas Instruments TUSB7340 controllers which provide the X79 Extreme11 USB 3.0 connectivity. The TUSB7340 is a USB 3.0 xHCI compliant host controller supporting up to four downstream ports using PCIe x1 Gen 2. One controller powers four ports on the motherboard's I/O panel, while the second supports a pair of onboard headers for another four connectors.

The X79 Extreme11 also offers FireWire via the VIA VT6315N controller which uses the PCIe x1 interface and supports two 400Mb/s IEEE1394a ports (one via the I/O panel, one via header).

However there are a few larger boards, such as the massive Extended ATX (EATX) boards which measure 305 × 330mm. Then there are a few XL-ATX boards measuring 345 x 262mm and finally two SSI CEB boards which are 305 × 267mm in size and one of them happens to be the X79 Extreme11.

The SSI CEB form factor was designed by the Server System Infrastructure (SSI) forum and derived from the larger SSI EEB form factor. The good news is that SSI CEB motherboards have the same mounting holes and the same IO connector area as ATX motherboards, meaning the X79 Extreme11 is fully compatible with ATX computer cases.

Asrock has made the most of the extra room by employing their first class 24+2 Power Phase along with their Digi Power VRM design and Dual-Stack MOSFET (DSM). By adopting digital pulse-width modulation (PWM), the Asrock motherboard can provide CPU vcore voltage more efficiently and smoothly. Compared to analog PWM, digital PWM can optimize the CPU power solution and provide a proper and stable vcore for the processor.

The Dual-Stack MOSFET feature is an innovative new design of MOSFETs. The silicon die area is increased by stacking two dies into a MOSFET. The larger the die area, the lower Rds(on). Compared to traditional discrete MOSFET, DSM can provide larger die area and lower Rds(on), so the power supply for CPU Vcore is more efficient.

Cooling the power phase along with the X79 chip is an elaborate system of heatsinks and heatpipes. The X7 chip itself is cooled using a massive heatsink which is actively cooled using a 40mm fan, this heatsink also cools the LSI SAS2308 chip as well.

Speaking of aesthetics, the X79 Extreme11 is an impressive looking motherboard that wears the Asrock Extreme theme proudly. The distinctive black, gray and gold color scheme helps make this Extreme motherboard very aggressive.

Complementing the boards striking good looks are a number of excellent design features such as the Good Night LED, Premium Gold Caps and V-Probe.

The Premium Gold Caps are luxury capacitors. These 100% Japan-made solid capacitors are sleek, high gloss caps with a premium gold coating representing long life and stable performance. Finally the V-Probe is a set of seven detection points laid on this motherboard. It allows overclockers to easily and quickly receive the accurate voltage readings via the multi-tester.

The boards I/O panel features eight USB 2.0 ports along with four USB 3.0 ports. There is also a single Firewire port, two eSATA ports, two Ethernet ports, a single PS/2 port, CMOS reset switch, S/PDIF connector and five 3.5mm audio jacks.

Hardware - Intel Core i7 3960X (3.30GHz) - x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24) - Kingston HyperX 240GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1.5GB) - Asrock Extreme4 (Intel X79) - Asrock Extreme11 (Intel X79) - Asrock Fatal1ty X79 Champion (Intel X79) - Asus P9X79 Deluxe (Intel X79) - Intel DX79SI (Intel X79) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 301.42

Hardware - Intel Core i7 3770K (3.50GHz) - Intel Core i7 2600K (3.40GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24) - Kingston HyperX 240GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1.5GB) - Asrock Z77 Extreme9 (Intel Z77) - Asrock Z77 Extreme6 (Intel Z77) - Asrock Z68 Extreme4 (Intel Z68) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 301.42

Hardware - AMD FX-8150 (3.6GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24) - Kingston HyperX 240GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1.5GB) - Asus Crosshair IV Extreme (AMD 890FX) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 301.42

The memory bandwidth performance of the Asrock X79 Extreme11 was as expected, producing a read throughput of 1.84GB/s and a write throughput of 15.0GB/s, which was very similar to results produced by other X79 motherboards using the Intel Core i7-3960X processor.

The L2 cache performance of the Intel Core i7-3960X processor was very similar on all tested X79 motherboards. Here the Asrock X79 Extreme11 again performed much like other X79 boards that we have tested.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 performed well in the SPECviewperf v11 Maya and SolidWorks tests, delivering similar performance to the X79 Extreme4 and Fatal1ty X79 Champion boards.

The CINEBENCH R11.5 CPU test looks primarily at CPU performance, as the name suggests. Since all five tested X79 boards were armed with the same Intel Core i7-3960X processor, the results are all very much the same.

The in-built WinRAR benchmark favored the Asrock X79 Extreme11 allowing it to just beat the Fatal1ty X79 Champion by a slim margin, to deliver our strongest result in this test yet.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 performed well in the Microsoft Excel 2010 test, taking just 3.67 seconds to complete the work load which is the same result posted by the Fatal1ty X79 Champion and Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboards.

The custom WinRAR compression test saw the Asrock X79 Extreme11 match the performance of the other test X79 motherboards, while the performance was also very similar to our Core i7-3770K test system.

The Adobe Photoshop CS5 test took 16.5 seconds to complete when using the Asrock X79 Extreme11, which is the same result recorded by the Fatal1ty X79 Champion and Intel DX79SI motherboards.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 scored well in the Fritz Chess 13 built-in benchmark, with 19303 kilo nodes per second making it faster than most X79 boards tested.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 managed to render 157fps in the HandBrake test which is typical for an X79 board armed with the Core i7-3960X processor.

Again the Asrock X79 Extreme11 delivers typical performance for an X79 board loaded with the Core i7-3960X processor in both the first and second pass x264 HD Benchmark tests.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 took 5 minutes and 33 seconds to complete the TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress workload, which is the exact same time posted by the Fatal1ty X79 Champion.

Despite its overwhelming specifications the Core i7-3960X is actually slower than the old Core i7-2600K in DiRT3 as well as the i7-3770K. Still with an average of 90.8fps at 1920x1200 the Asrock X79 Extreme11 was hardly slow.

When compared to the competition the performance of the Asrock X79 Extreme11 was average in The Witcher 2. That said, although the X79 Extreme11 appeared in the middle of the pack, it was less than 1fps slower than the fastest board at 1920x1200.

Again the Asrock X79 Extreme11 looked average, this time in Crysis 2. However it was again less than 1fps slower than the fastest board tested, which is obviously an insignificant margin.

Unfortunately we were unable match this overclock with the X79 Extreme11 as we were limited to a 46x clock multiplier for a clock speed of 4.60GHz. Although this is still a decent air-cooled overclock with the Core i7-3960X, we couldn’t help but be disappointed that the X79 Extreme11 was unable to match the Fatal1ty X79 Champion.

Of course our overclocking results do not reflect how all Asrock X79 Extreme11 motherboards will behave and this is also not to say that it does not overclock as well as the Fatal1ty X79 Champion, this was simply the case with the two boards we had on hand.

All the extra hardware strapped onto the Asrock X79 Extreme11 does have a negative impact on power consumption, as we found under load the system consumption increased to 299 watts. Still, compared to the Asus P9X79 Deluxe which offers far less features, the extra 7 watts should be easy to justify.

The mass of SATA ports is a feature of the X79 Extreme11 that I personally really appreciate. In my opinion there are far too many motherboards priced over $300 that simply do not offer enough SATA ports, with some sticking to the six provided by the chipset which allows for just two 6Gb/s ports.

The LSI SAS 2308 controller allows users to create a RAID using up to eight drives and this is a feature no other desktop motherboards that we are aware of offers. For extreme power users the option to create a high speed SSD RAID array with data redundancy is possible.

Benchmark junkies or those looking to play across multiple high resolution screens will be able to take advantage of the 4-Way SLI or 4-Way CrossFireX support which feeds full x16 bandwidth to each card. Again this is another exceptional feature of the X79 Extreme11 which is also very rare to find amongst the competition.

The rest of the X79 Extreme11, such as build quality, board design, UEFI BIOS and other Asrock features, is as good as previously reviewed X79 Extreme motherboards. The board’s performance was excellent as were its overclocking abilities, making this a very solid high-end offering.

This leaves just the issue of pricing and at $600 the X79 Extreme11 might seem like a hard pill to swallow. Still, when you factor in that the cheapest LSI controller card to utilize the SAS2308 PCIe 3.0 controller costs around $300 the X79 Extreme11 starts to look quite impressive in terms of value.

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Those that require the ability to create a RAID array with up to eight 6Gb/s drives along with extreme multi-GPU setups will find the X79 Extreme11 actually fairs rather well in terms of value. For those that do not require these features the X79 Extreme11 is obviously overkill and Asrock’s less extreme motherboards will fit the bill better, and with the X79 Extreme9, 7, 6, 4 and 3 to choose from, all options are covered.

I know that if I were given the option to pick any X79 motherboard on the market right now the X79 Extreme11 would be at the top of my list, making it the number one pick. For this reason I am going to award the Asrock X79 Extreme11 with our must have hardware award, as it truly deserves it.