X79 Board for video Editing

Hey guys,

I'll be soon building an editing system designed to run Avid MC6, Adobe Premier and probably FCP (it's going to be a hackintosh, my collegues decision not mine), I've got most of the parts lined up, I'm just looking for advice for a good X79 board to run our 3930K on. I'm looking at ASUS for the most part, but am open to other ideas.

P.S. Does anyone know what the major differences between the Rampage and Sabertooth ranges are?

The differences between the Sabertooth and Rampage boards are very little. The Rampage boards have a few niche features that the Sabertooth doesn't (things like support and special bios switches for liquid nitrogen cooling), but the differences really aren't too significant. They have similar features and their power delivery design is exactly the same, so you should be able to get great overclocks out of either of them.

Go for the Sabertooth if you want to save a little cash. Go for one of the Rampage boards if you want the best of the best. I personally wouldn't recommend anything other than ASUS for X79, because I've seen reviews where people were having a lot of problems with X79 with every other brand. ASUS seems to be the only brand that actually did the X79 platform right, but other companies may have made some revisions to their boards so they actually function properly.

MSI Big Bang xpower II  i realy like that board :P  notice XL-ATX

Asus Rampage IV Extreme  notice E-ATX

Asus Sabbertooth x79  ATX

for the e-atx or xl-atx you need a bigtower case!

 

I really don't like MSI boards. Their bios is just...bad.

I've had really good experiance with MSI. It's gigabyte I had bad luck with

can you discribe whats bad about  Msi bios?  i talk about the big bang here not the  x79-gd45 8d?

 

i have the ASUS p9x79 Pro with an i7 3820 inside and it works great. The uefi is quite nice and the board itseld is packed with features. It is rather pricy but so are the rampage and sabertooth boards. Also the color scheme looks amazing, just a side note.

i only prefer asus or msi boards. i just know both are quality products. in most of the thimes they are not the cheapest boards but , the quality is allways fine.

by the way msi hass the cheapest x79 board on the market, the Msi x79 45G 8D its selling for about about 170 dollar, and thats a great thing too, and it supports the most ramm capaicaty of all x79 bords like 128 GB quad chanel. but that realy doesnt make much sense. all the products are militairy class III so that should be great.

but  from msi  i like the x79 bigbang series the most. ☻its just a awesome thing.

to bad msi didnt make a 990FX big bang model :(

 

It depends really on the flexibility of expansion you are going to need.

Looking at ASUS X79 you are going to get great consistency in high quality components and key features being integrated

P9X79 3 Way support ( 4 USB 3 ) but no front header

All other features front and back USB 3.0 featuring UASP support

P9X79 PRO - 3 Way support, SSD Caching

P9X79 Deluxe ( integrated WiFi and Bluetooth ) 3 Way support, SSD Caching ( has optimal slot layout for 3 way which does not need overhang and as wifi and Bluetooth are fully integrated it does not affect slot expansion ).

SABERTOOTH ( 5 year warranty ) 3 way support, SSD Caching

P9X79 WS 3 way and 4 way support with most PCIe slot expansion, SSD Caching

All feature a digital design for the CPU, VRM and DRAM allowing for the same overclocking capability. They all feature fully sealed inductors with high amperage and dual n mosfets and 5K rated capacitors.

WS has the benefit of having official support for Xeon and ECC if you are looking for the best reliability, stability and lengthy uptime rendering or processing. Additionally the WS feature Dual Intel Lan controllers which can be great for workstation if you are consistently uploading or transferring to a network volume or nas. The WS also features special OROM validation for complex add in cards like PCIe raid cards, capture cards and more. While these type of devices should all work on any ASUS board more complex cards can require special initialization options coded into the UEFI.

All feature key technologies like

USB 3 Boost, Fan Xpert + ( advanced fan controls for each fan header ), Intel Lan for high throughput, superior management and lower CPU utilization under heavy load, Full UEFI with update.CAP format support, USB Bios Flashback ( for flashing or updating or recovery the UEFI without needing to post/turn on the system or even have a CPU, memory, or graphics card installed. only standby power is required.

All of them also feature SSD Caching if you need to accelerate mechanical storage performance for improved read response and throughput. The standard P9X79 does not feature SSD Caching.

As you noted the UEFI is also outstanding with extensive control and tuning flexibility whether it be for efficiency or overclocking. Additionally they have all be updated to the latest version of UEFI container format .CAP which replaces the legacy .ROM standard use by other boards.

 

Moving past that in regards to ROG vs TUF series

TUF is focused for users who are looking for long term stability and warranty support ( as the board features a 5 year warranty ). The key features are focus on advanced cooling and monitoring. The boad has an advanced layout of 10 hardware sensor that offer real-time temperature across the entire board.

Additionally there is special fan implementation that cools the primary VRM assembly which is useful for improving stability at high overclocks ( 4.7 to 4.8GHz ).

While TUF is not focused for overclockers the consistent design feature on it like P9 series and ROG series means your OC experience will be just as solid should you overclock it.

Depends on your OC focus some streamlined OC options are not present. An example is Auto Tuning but it still features our TPU function whcih allows you to OC to 4.2GHz in a single click of a button within the UEFI.

ROG Series have the highest grade of onboard components are meant for hardcore gamers and overclockers and tweaker enthusiasts.

The core power delivery implementation is the same but improved

ROG features 10K capacitors with higher and lower operating values then the 5K rated caps used on P9 series and TUF series. ( keep in mind all other board vendors use 2K so it is already over twice the lifespan on a non ROG ASUS board )

Additionally the ROG series feature a more advanced choke and mosfet design allowing for higher power output delivery. For a general user though this will not readily impact them it is really only for overclockers looking to push pass 4.8GHz with consistent high level CPU/Memory loads

ROG additionally feature superior onboard audio with a fully isolated audio design ( Supreme FX III ) vs standard audio present on non ROG series. This design actually splits the audio section from the primary board PCB and fully isolates it via cooper plating and independent PCB design implementation. This is actual visible due to the red line design.

The UEFI also has some more advanced specialized OC and tuning parameters. These are really focused at the tweakers out there.

You also get additional gaming oriented software enhancements

GameFirst packet priority design to reduce ping and improve latency in games ( and can be applied to general applications like downloading, steaming, voip and more )

Full 1 year license of Kaspersky AV and full license of Daemon Tools Standard.

Additionally ROG has ROG connect a hardware based external monitoring and diagnosing option which allows you to check speeds, voltages, fan speeds and even read debug codes in string format vs code.

The formula also swaps the secondary SATA6G controller to a ASMedia 1061 vs the SSD Caching controller used on the other X79 boards. It does offer slightly faster read and write performance but at the expense of not offering SSD Caching support.

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions let me know.

 

Hopefully this provides some additional insight.