Designed for PROfessionals and gamers, the ASUS X99-Pro was made to be the perfect pair for Intel’s Haswell-E processors.
The unit is of white and black accent, it looks pretty much like a gaming-board. That’s not to say you can’t use it for gaming purpose because the Haswell-E processors are awesome but games don’t require that much processing power. ๐ Regardless, the board was designed for both gamers and professionals, offering awesome features for both sides of the camp.
The cover over the I/O port is huge, so huge that it almost conflicts with the last DIMM slot. It’s not an issue if you’re using it and even if you do, it’s not likely you’re going to remove the RAM any time soon. There are a total of 8 DIMM slots and that’s plenty for you to mix around your DIMM slots.
The CPU fan takes the usual ATX12V location while the ATX12V is placed very closely to the top most heatsink.
Strangely enough the SAT3 ports 1 and 2 are placed next to the ATX socket, far away from the rest like the SATA Express port.
Well that’s where the rest of the SATA connection is located, and around the ports are the various switches for XMP, EPU and TPU.
The board comes also with ASUS Crystal Sound, M.2 X4 via PCI-E Express and very past PCI-E lanes.
40-Lane CPU- 3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16, x16/x16, x16/x16/x8)
28-Lane CPU- 3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 ( x16, x16/x8, x16/x8/x4)
*Intel Core i7-5820K has 28 lanes, the higher models has 40.
Being a PRO board, it’s great to see ASUS included the power buttons and debug LED.
Lastly, the I/O ports and Wi-Fi module.
– 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
– 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
– 6 x USB 3.0 (blue)
– 4 x USB 2.0
– 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
– 5 x Audio jack(s)
– 1 x USB BIOS Flashback Button(s)
– 1 x ASUS Wi-Fi GO! module (Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth v4.0
More details at the official product page.
User Experience
As always, ASUS board turns out to be rock solid.
The board had no issues with the Intel Core i7-5960X and the HyperX DDR4-3000 RAM that’s in the lab, all things powered up as normal.
Overclocking? You’re covered. Multi-GPU? It’s covered too. You even have the Wi-Fi GO! feature that gives you complete control of your PC รขโฌโ even when you’re away from home!
That said, if you’re into the finer details of overclocking then you should be looking at ASUS ROG Rampage V instead.
The Verdict
The ASUS X99-PRO retails at around RM 1,250 which I think is a reasonable price for a board with this feature, what a great board to pair with any Haswell-E processor. The white colored heatsink and covers look great, especially if you have a white-themed setup.