ASROCK X79 Extreme9
A
srock seems very
serious about getting
into the good books of the
overclocking crowd, i.e. you
reading this are most likely
the individuals Asrock is
hoping to attract with their
more recent offerings such
as this board.
Oddly enough the Extreme9
is very similar in layout to the
ECS board. Sure enough it
has eight DIMM slots instead
of four, but it also has an
excessive amount of SATA
ports (12 as well) and has the
Power, Reset and Post LED
in the same tragic location as
the ECS and INTEL boards.
It’s also a standard ATX board
with a Molex power header
for providing extra power to
the graphics card.
This board unlike any
other here however,
does not feature voltage
measuring points at all so
that’s a missed opportunity
36 The OverClocker Issue 18 | 2012
especially because it retails
for $344 which is just $25
less than the UD7. However
in its defence, the Extreme9
does have a smooth BIOS. It
doesn’t mean all the options
work, but it’s quick and
slick with all the basic and
advanced functionality you
would expect out of a vendor
taking the overclocking
market seriously. Sadly, this
is also where things weren’t
going according to plan. The
Asrock board could only
muster a memory clock
of 1866MHz and 2133MHz
being bootable but nothing
remotely close to stable.
It also requires SpeedStep
to be enabled for you to
use the higher multipliers.
Much like the ECS board it
also has 1 MHz increments
to the Bclk so you can
imagine what fun that is.
As a result of the oddity
with the memory multiplier,
the Asrock board was the
slowest in the benchmarks
bar the INTEL board. For a
board that costs this much
it does leave a slightly bitter
taste in the mouth. We
also found that our VCSSA
voltage had to be much
higher on this board than on
any other, but we do suspect
that under load it could be
dropping and causing the
board to crash.
Overall this isn’t a bad
board and it still has a
higher memory multiplier
than the most we could get
from the INTEL board, so
that alone with some other
enhancements make it a
better product. If it’s worth
the asking price, well that’s
another thing. Do though look
out for the Fatal1ty board
which is supposedly much
better and is in every way
superior to the Extreme9.
Verdict: [FINE]