ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: LGA 2011, four channel memory, 4-way X fire or SLI, whats not to like?

Cons: I hesitate to put this here because I may yet figure out the problem, but I could not for the life of me get the speaker jacks to work. I used an analog to USB adapter to get the job done and am still messing with drivers/software but have not ruled out the possibility of a faulty board component yet.

Pros: 7 months since I built mine and not a single problem. Dealing with Asus boards is like playing the lottery; when you get a winner you win big but if you get a loser even crying won't help you with their horrid customer service. Fortunately my X79 Sabertooth shows what Asus can do when they get it right. When I built this rig last November I was lucky to get the mobo, CPU, RAM and GPU at Black Friday prices which when combined are still hundreds of dollars lower than today. I've been upgrading other components as needed when the price is right.

My 3930k benchmarked a CPU score of 17200 at PassMark @5.022GHZ and the whole thing made their top 50 on my first and only submission there last December. I've got it back down to 4.7GHZ at 1.32 core volts for everyday use and it's never crashed. I'm totally spoiled now because it's SO fast in anything I do with it I get impatient working on other computers. Video transcoding, audio production work and everything else is is just plain fun to do when you don't have to wait. All things must work together to have a truly great system and this motherboard is the foundation of such a system.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Asus X79 Sabertooth
3930k liquid cooled
64GB G.Skill Ripjaws Z series
MSI HD 7970
Corsair H100 w/4 Silverstone FM121's
Corsair HX 1050
Asus Xonar D2X
Samsung 840 Pro
2 Samsung HD103SJ F3 1TB
LiteOn iHBS212 Blu-ray burner
Plextor 880SA DVD burner
Corsair Carbide 500R (white)

I build and maintain the computers & servers for a radio station, this is my grins & giggles toy that makes me forget about some of the things I have to work with every day.

Pros: Works as it should. The UEFI Bios is easy to use and great for overclocking, as well as the ASUS software for overclocking. Plenty of space for cards, lots of room for RAM, lots of SATA for hard drives. Solid board, great company.

Cons: No cons, just a solid board.

Pros: No problems. Everything worked perfect the first time.

Cons: price maybe?

Other Thoughts: I didn't do any major tweaking on my build

Pros: 1) Rugged build
2) Runs cool
3) 5 yr warranty
4) Relatively "easy" build after insane issue with display card (see cons below)

Cons: 1) Poor BIOS documentation

2) The insane issue with my display card:
This wasn't per se an ASUS MB issue but it cost me 5 days!

I research all my hardware before I do a build and then pay a techy to assemble the unit since I don't build systems every day. I want my systems to last me at least 3-5 yrs without having any break downs for that entire time. So far, I've accomplished that when I purchased 2 of the P5N32-E SLI Plus WiFi back about 7 years ago. Those boards served me well past my expectations but it was time to upgrade. Even a good car will eventually die unless you replace parts and that's not an option with a MB.

My system was working perfectly when I lugged it to my Ford Explorer to make the 30 minute treak home.

Then the problems started after I lugged this 70 pound monster up to the 5th floor of my condo unit. This wasn't an ASUS problem but after getting the unit home I started getting the dreaded Nvidea driver error, "Display driver %1 stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

I tried a couple solutions including different drivers, reseating the card. I must have spent 50 hours on the phone and doing searches to see what the ***** was going on. This included several calls to both EVGA and ASUS.

I finally got tired of losing time and went to a local store and purchase a new video card. The problem stopped immediately. Go figure, the unit worked in the tech's office and a drive home created an insane problem. I'm going to take the old video card to the tech and have him test it in a different unit to see if it is indeed the video card.

I staill have the BOOT_DEVICE_LED light that stays on all of the time. I am worried about that even though the tech guy at ASUS told me it wasn't a problem. I dread removing the CPU cooler and looking for bent pins although it doesn't look like I have a choice. It's either that or something may not be grounded properly.

You commonly read horror stories about ASUS support. All I can say is that it depends on who you speak to. One tech didn't even know how to reset the BIOS to the defaults. I hung up on him. Another guy spent over an hour on the phone helping me. He knew his stuff.

Overall, I've owned 5 different ASUS boards and, although the previous ones have been more than a challenge, this one was the easiest to get set up. If it weren't for the video card issue I would have been up an running 5 days quicker.

Other Thoughts: My Build:
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MB: ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79
POWER SUPPLY - SeaSonic X-SERIES X-1050 1050W
CPU - Intel Core i7-3820 Sandy Bridge-E 3.6GHz
CPU COOLER - CORSAIR Hydro Series H80i
MEMORY - 32 GB G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866
CASE - Armor VA8003BWS Full Tower
VIDEO - EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB SuperClocked+ - Model 03G-P4-3663-KR
BLURAY - ASUS Model BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS
RAID CONTROLLER - HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL PCI-Express 2.0 x8 Low Profile SATA-SAS 6Gb/s
SOUND - HT | OMEGA CLARO Plus+ 7.1
UPS - APC Back-UPS XS 1500 LCD
WIN7 Ultimate SP1

Drives:
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SSD - 256 GB - SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW
SATA-600 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB
SATA-600 - 2X Western Digital WD Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 IN RAID 1
SATA-600 - 2X TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 2TB 7200 RPM IN RAID 1
SATA-300 - Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS-01G6U4 150GB 10000 RPM
SATA-300 - Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB
SATA-300 - Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM
SATA-300 - SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM
SATA-300 - HITACHI Deskstar H3IK20003272SP (0S02861) 2TB 7200 RPM
SATA-300 - HITACHI Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330 (0F10311) 2TB 7200 RPM

Misc:
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COFFEE POT: This is always kept inside my case and is heated by the various components. It helps me move as fast as this computer. Couldn't be happier.

Pros: 2011 board so it's full of features, love the color over my previous Crosshair V red board. BIOS is incredibly easy to navigate and it is very stable when you OC.

Cons: Due to the design to support 8 DIMMs it doesn't have as big of a heatsink for Vcore, they try to make up for this by running a heatpipe to a tiny heatsink with a tiny fan. it does a good job of cooling but it doesn't stay as cool. Not really a big con as it's only a slight difference.

Other Thoughts: Great board for the price, 2011 boars are expensive and this board has tons of features without cranking the price too high. Long warranty from ASUS is a nice bonus but I doubt the board will die while under warranty.

Pros: Very stable board so far have been running it for a few months now. Has five year warranty. You can tell that asus uses better parts to make this compared to my old m3a79t deluxe. Overclocks very good and simple to use BIOS. Can use your mouse in it to which is very cool.

Cons: Price.

Pros: none

Cons: DOA, Broken upon arrival

Other Thoughts: upon receiving this board I immediately noticed that is was missing the driver disc and board extensions. then when I take the board out of the box and look it over I realized that there were damaged pins for the CPU. damaged either in shipping which I highly doubt because the box was fine. I call NEWEGG and they tell me that its ASUS's fault and then I call ASUS and they tell me its NEWEGG. Both give me the runaround and neither will RMA. The REP for ASUS was a real jerk and said " Looks like you just bought a very expensive paper weight." I had high hopes for this board and now I will never buy anything from ASUS again!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that the board came DOA due to bent pins found. Call newegg and ask to speak to a manager and see if they will be able to replace it for you as is seems they may have given you a unit that is used if it's missing the driver disc and some accessories. Let them know that the unit is not even 30 days old and that you are still under the return policy. I have seen on some of the reviews that some other customers were able to get a one time courtesy replacement eventhough they also had bent pins.

Guess it depends on who you speak with.

If they will not honor the replacement then please provide me with your serial number so I can see how much we charge to replace a board with bent pins.

You can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty USA

Pros: vno problems.
I was using many motherboards Sabertooth brand in lats 1 year.
Installing driver for the LAN on board is tricky but possible. You have to select closest matching LAN card model and select closest matching driver from DVD. I am using 2008 R2 OS.

Cons: None

Pros: Easy setup. Build went off with out a problem. All the memory is seen by the board.

Cons: eSATA and firewire do not work...Tried turning them on in the BIOS and still got nothing out of it. Reading more into it, I am not the only person to have this problem.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you are having issues with the sata port and firewire.

Have you tried updating the bios and the drivers to see if that will resolve your issue with the sata ports and firewire.

Here is a link below where you can update the sata drivers and regarding the firewire, please update the drivers for chipset.

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_X79/#support_Download_30

If you are still having issues, please remove the CPU and check for bent pins. If you have no bent pins, your bios and drivers updated, then you will have to send the unit in for service.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey