Trying to put together a new workstation build and I arbitrarily threw one of the new Asus X99s into my cart. Then I started reading reviews and I'm seeing a lot of nightmares about them wreaking havoc on the new Broadwell-E chips. Does anyone have any info on that?
I would go for the MSI E-ATX but it won't fit in the Phanteks Evolv.
What would y'all do in this scenario? I'm not set on the 4 I compared if something else is better for my circumstances.
As far as the constraints: - Not planning on SLI. - Would like Wireless/Bluetooth (but not opposed to getting a PCI card or a USB adapter). - Need 32 GB/s M.2 - White or silver would be awesome but not at the expense of performance.
Personally I try to avoid Asus because their quality control has been lacking since 2012. My preference would be Asrock. MSI is good too but you won't get the best overclocking results because analog VRM.
I would potentially avoid MSI as JayzTwoCents had an MSI X99A GodLike Gaming Carbon which is one of the most expensive boards they provide and it had a broken DIMM slot.
Since the sample size of the issue is effectively 1 person as far as I know it might just be bad luck on his part but just pointing it out.
I'll second the ASRock boards. I know some people who don't like them, I know a couple who hate them, but their high-end boards at least have been absolutely superb for me.
Cool, thanks. I saw a video of him putting an MSI in a build for a friend of his and it looked good. That said, even 1 for 2 is no good. I also just read about their QC issues as well.
Sample size of 1 person indeed. Actually sample size of 1 motherboard.
In the past 2 years I have built 9 systems with MSI motherboards+GFX cards combo (on top of my own 2 MSI-based PCs), and I never had a problem with any of them.
FYI here's my buddy's MSI motherboard. His GF was stupid enough to cover his PC's intakes and exhausts with a thick blanket to protect the PC from dust (construction work, replacing the windows). His HAF X couldn't draw any air at all, so the internals got so hot that the retention bracket, northbridge heatpipe, several of the ferrite chokes and the cpu cooler turned blue. The fan controller's alarm went off when the internal temp reached 70°C, but she didn't do anything about it. She (and the construction workers) just wondered why the PC was beeping. After an hour and a half, it went into thermal shutdown.
That happened in May 2015. The PC still runs almost 24/7 and in the meantime we upped the OC from 3.8 to 4GHz. I don't know many other motherboards that could survive torture like that without sustaining any damage (except for a dead BIOS battery).
So yeah, when I saw the Skunkworks vid, I concluded that Jay had some really bad luck or that he's an idiot who can't insert his RAM properly. I'm still not sure which of the two it is.
I was actually just thinking of this video! Seemed like really bad luck, and, like he said, this generation of X99 has really been bothered by a number of problems, varying from company to company.
I don't have any personal experience with X99, and know only one person in real life that does. (Even then, I don't know him that well.) I have heard a lot of different reports online, though, and the worst have been about Gigabyte. Shrugs
I swear by ASRock's more expensive boards. If you're on a budget then I'd go MSI since their boards can be solid, and really competitive. Keep in mind that MSI can skimp on features on their lower end boards, for example I couldn't enable VM-D on their X99-A USB 3.1 board.
Edit: I'm using the X99-ITX AC from ASRock right now and it's probably the most stable and reliable X99 motherboard I've used, which is surprising considering its an ITX board
To be fair though, ASRock is offering the only board that I've seen with Wifi/Bluetooth at the price point (220). That's around the same price as the Asus board that doesn't offer Wifi/Bluetooth (but of course it does have the lighting and a bit more in the way of USB 3.1 ports).
So as long as the ASRock board is high quality it seems like the winner from a spec standpoint before taking QC into account.
