X99 Boards - Whats on your wish list?

[Redstorm]

The board ill be looking for come September will have 2 x M.2 (PCIe 3.0 x4)

Basically allow you to run duel GFX plus 2 x M.2 drives over the 40 PCIe Lanes available to Haswell-e 5960x and 5930k CPU's.

Enough 4 pin fan headers to control fan speeds (5 or 6 should do)

Nice to haves:
Heat sink compatible with water cooling (optional)

Time will tell, we should start to see more leaks soon.
Basically the Asrock X99 Extreme 6 with an additional M.2 slot.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

some things to consider:

1. the 5820K should be plenty for 2x GFX cards + extra for storage (16x, 8x, 4x), the point of the 5930K will be for 3 or more GFX cards, although I'm sure Intel would rather us stay ignorant about the situation and play it "safe" by going with higher profit margin 5930K.

2. M.2 is a mobile format and is a stopgap on the desktop; we have PCIe slots that we'll be able to populate with PCIe SSDs, which will really start to take off with the advent of NVMe. Then there's also SATAe, which should replace any remaining role that M.2 has on the desktop side of things. Then there's also the fact that X99 is supposed to deliver up to 10x SATA6 ports, so we can just RAID0 a bunch of regular SATA SSDs to supplement NVMe drives.

 

[Redstorm]

Unless your water cooling your 3 - 4 gfx cards you don't want any PCIe SSD cards blocking airflow to your gfx cards.

The appeal of the M.2 slot its compact nature.

A 5820k would probably do today gfx, but what about tomorrow. I usually skip a CPU generation or two and just upgrade the GFX in between, you get about 4 - 5 years out of a system that way.

Your right 8 lanes of PCIe 3.0 is fine for today, ill be looking at 2 years ahead when im due for a GFX update.

 

[dmoney1980]

mATX form factor with wireless AC built in. Also, the ability to boot from an m2/ sata express drive

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Unless your water cooling your 3 - 4 gfx cards you don't want any PCIe SSD cards blocking airflow to your gfx cards.

The appeal of the M.2 slot its compact nature.

A 5820k would probably do today gfx, but what about tomorrow. I usually skip a CPU generation or two and just upgrade the GFX in between, you get about 4 - 5 years out of a system that way.

Your right 8 lanes of PCIe 3.0 is fine for today, ill be looking at 2 years ahead when im due for a GFX update.

The appeal of M.2 is potential to overcome SATA limitation, otherwise you can just plug in a normal SATA device and have it far away from the motherboard if cooling is that much of a concern.

As far as PCI-e SSD, if you're really that paranoid about cooling, just get a motherbaord with a PCIe slot configuration that is suitable

16x slot = GFX @16x
*x slot = covered up by GFX
*x slot = open / available for cooling
16x slot = GFX @ 8x
*x slot = covered up by GFX
*x slot = open / available for cooling
16x slot = SSD @ 4x

as far as worrying about whether or not 8x PCI-e 3.0 will be enough 2 years from now, Thunderbolt 2 is capable of delivering 80-90% performance of a 780Ti (http://anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-over-thunderbolt-2), that means we'd probably be fine with only 4x PCI-e 3.0 right now, 16x would only be necessary if you plan on sitting on this platform for 5+ years if your primary concern is just for gaming.

 

[Redstorm]

The appeal of M.2 is potential to overcome SATA limitation, otherwise you can just plug in a normal SATA device and have it far away from the motherboard if cooling is that much of a concern.

As far as PCI-e SSD, if you're really that paranoid about cooling, just get a motherbaord with a PCIe slot configuration that is suitable

16x slot = GFX @16x
*x slot = covered up by GFX
*x slot = open / available for cooling
16x slot = GFX @ 8x
*x slot = covered up by GFX
*x slot = open / available for cooling
16x slot = SSD @ 4x

as far as worrying about whether or not 8x PCI-e 3.0 will be enough 2 years from now, Thunderbolt 2 is capable of delivering 80-90% performance of a 780Ti (http://anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-over-thunderbolt-2), that means we'd probably be fine with only 4x PCI-e 3.0 right now, 16x would only be necessary if you plan on sitting on this platform for 5+ years if your primary concern is just for gaming.

Thunderbolt is the new Firewire, it will go the same way and die a natural death, i don't trust anything Crapple have got their hand in. I don't know of anyone using it in the enthusiast community, if its costing 10-20% performance hit you'd be mad to use it.

4-5 years is my general upgrade cycle. Going from Lynnfield to Haswell-e is about double my current CPU (based on 4960X perf vs the i7-860)

You could pick a board that spaces the slots for best cooling or get one with 2 x M.2 slots out of the way with no impact on cooling at all.

I hope you back up your data cause all that RAID 0 your running in your SIG is ripe for a catastrophe.

 

[Ayah]

I seem to be on a 5-year cycle on. Right now I'm still on a 4.2GHz i7 920.

My ideal board:
E-ATX sized overclocking/enthusiast-oriented version of the gigabyte GA-6PXSVT.

 

[Redstorm]

I seem to be on a 5-year cycle on. Right now I'm still on a 4.2GHz i7 920.

My ideal board:
E-ATX sized overclocking/enthusiast-oriented version of the gigabyte GA-6PXSVT.

Workstation board, with 10GbE looks like most of the other features will make it with X99.

 

[AdamK47]

Give me a motherboard with 6 SATA 6gbps connectors to the Intel controller and I'll be all set. Need at least 4 connectors for 4 x 1TB SSDs in RAID-0.

 

[Grooveriding]

Whatever the Rampage 5 Extreme ships with is what I will have to be happy with

 

[Railgun]

Minimal additional ports to give me as many PCI-E lanes as possible for real cards such as a real RAID card, sound card, etc. I only use one sata port on my x58 board now and minimal other onboard services.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Thunderbolt is the new Firewire, it will go the same way and die a natural death, i don't trust anything Crapple have got their hand in. I don't know of anyone using it in the enthusiast community, if its costing 10-20% performance hit you'd be mad to use it.

the only reason I was pointing out Thunderbolt was to show how a 780Ti running on Thunderbolt 2 (20Gbps) was still operating within 80-90% of its performance on 16x PCI-e 3.0 (128Gbps), implying even a mere 8x PCI-e 3.0 will be plenty for far more than double that of a 780Ti (i.e. should be good for beyond Maxwell and Pirate Islands)

I certainly wasn't suggesting to use Thunderbolt to drive a video card on desktop (although it would certainly be extremely interesting for laptop/tablet)

You could pick a board that spaces the slots for best cooling or get one with 2 x M.2 slots out of the way with no impact on cooling at all.

I think you're a little paranoid about cooling. A PCI-e SSD doesn't have to be that big, most aren't, and its proximity next to a hot video card would have little impact on the GPU's temps, plus there's little reason not to run such a postulated configuration as you haven't specified use of any other PCI-e cards, and PCI-e SSDs are poised to wipe the floor with M.2/SATAe. I just don't see a dire need outside of USFF for direct M.2 support when there will be SATAe and PCI-e and up to 10xSATA6

I see the appeal for mATX, as we're losing space for 2-3 PCI-e slots that way

I hope you back up your data cause all that RAID 0 your running in your SIG is ripe for a catastrophe.

that's what NAS and DAS is for. Also, while I have had some HDD RAID-0s hiccup on me, I have never yet had a SSD RAID-0 array fail on me (a couple different Crucial M4 arrays, now this pair of 830s), pretty confident in their reliability over mechanical HDD.

the HDD RAID0s are mostly for working with and juggling massive video files (everything on my main PC is setup for performance, the secondary PCs are for backups/redundancy), and anything I want to save indefinitely gets stored to NAS/DAS.

Minimal additional ports to give me as many PCI-E lanes as possible for real cards such as a real RAID card, sound card, etc. I only use one sata port on my x58 board now and minimal other onboard services.

Soundcards can exist on USB2.0 bandwidth...and these CPUs have 28 or 40lanes of PCI-e 3.0 with the X99 chipset supplying an additional 8x PCI-e 2.0

you really don't have to worry, you really wouldn't have to worry with your X58 setup either

 

[Railgun]

Soundcards can exist on USB2.0 bandwidth...and these CPUs have 28 or 40lanes of PCI-e 3.0 with the X99 chipset supplying an additional 8x PCI-e 2.0

you really don't have to worry, you really wouldn't have to worry with your X58 setup either

Agreed...I'm just saying don't give me all the bells and whistles as I don't want/need them. I was just throwing that in as an example. I should have separated it out.

 

[Redstorm]

http://cdn2.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ASRock-X99-Extreme-4-635x421.jpg
http://cdn3.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ASRock-X99-Extreme-6-635x421.jpg
http://cdn4.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ASRock-X99-Killer-635x421.jpg

Their are also some photos of a de lidded 5960X around the web today, Solder/Epoxy TIM if the shot is to be believed, looks to be off a 12 core die so questionable if its legit.

 

[MongGrel]

An X5690, but doubt they will ever come down in price to make it practical vs a rebuild

The X5650 still doing well for me.

I'll worry in the future I guess.

Not the place for this I guess as the board dif.

Sorry later.

 

[Redstorm]

An X5690, but doubt they will ever come down in price to make it practical vs a rebuild

The X5650 still doing well for me.

I'll worry in the future I guess.

Shot of a previous gen Xeon maybe

That Xeon 5650 2.66GHz has a retail or $999 according to Intel

 

[dmoney1980]

Can anyone confirm if the current socket 2011 CPU heatsinks / all-in-one water cooling solutions fit the upcoming x99 boards?

 

[Redstorm]

Can anyone confirm if the current socket 2011 CPU heatsinks / all-in-one water cooling solutions fit the upcoming x99 boards?

NZXT X61 supports 2011-3 so yes.


Compatibility Intel LGA 2011-3, 1366, 1156, 1155, 1150 CPUs
AMD FM2, FM1, AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2 CPUs1

dont know about the rest, pay to check any coolers your looking at on the vendors site for compatibility.

 

[dmoney1980]

thanks Redstorm

 

[TheGoat Eater]

This one from MSI - are teasing the X99S GAMING 9 AC. and it seems to have a hw streaming engine feature

 

[Redstorm]

With a month to go till the official release it wont be long till we get some leaked benchies

 

[Redstorm]

If you hanging for an ASUS leak, they inadvertently leaked the manual for the X99 Delux on their web site.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2011/X99-DELUXE/e9504_x99-deluxe_series_ug_for_web_only.pdf

 

[Tristor]

I'm going to wait to see what Xeon support looks like on the X99 boards, since I'd like one of the E5-v3 Xeons for my next workstation build. It's looking like Asus is likely a winner though, although EVGA may still yet be in the running for me.

 

[FlanK3r]

for me Rampage V Extreme, board for OC fun

 

[Blue_Max]

some things to consider:

1. the 5820K should be plenty for 2x GFX cards + extra for storage.

That's why my wish list starts with some more affordable ~$100-ish variants ideal for the 5820k!