ASRock X79 Extreme11 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Motherboard looks like it has a lot of potential. Since I have only received two defective motherboards which had bent CPU pins, I haven't had the opportunity to take one out of the box and use it.

Cons: I have received two defective motherboards with bent CPU pins. The first motherboard was replaced by Newegg RMA process, but the second one I get to deal directly with the manufacturer.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. ASRock mainboards are fully tested to assure that they're working before shipped. The CPU socket pins on the mainboard are fragile and need to be handling with carefully. In addition, the CPU socket is covered with the cap to avoid damage the pins during shipping and should not be removed until installing a CPU. If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact us at user@ASRockamerica.com. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: super updated awesome motherboard with everything I want.

Cons: too many bad reviews. no phone support. no 30 day replacement policy. too expensive to be playing games with whether or not I get one that works.

Other Thoughts: seems I have to keep waiting. hasn't it been over a year and half since they put out the 2011? looking at all the bad reviews I cant justify buying this motherboard.

bent pins, really? no 30 day replacement policy from either manufacturer or seller? what is up with that, ive never heard of such a thing on newegg.

no phone service for a 600 dollar motherboard?

11 dollars for a sticker you didn't put in a box? haha

bios that don't work with all known cpu's?

raid that doesn't work with every buyer?

no compatible memory for 64 gigs of ram?

how long does the list have to get before they fix their motherboard instead of having a pub rep come here and tell us we are clowns that don't know how to build computers?

I guess I know why they went back to quads with the 1150 sockets.

I doubt they will be supporting this socket much longer. good thing I waited. what was that one socket, o yeah, the 1366, whatever happened to that?

no way im buying a 1150 since it's just another quad.

good going asrock way to keep the tech moving up.

feel free to contact me when you get a motherboard with these stats that has a 30 day return policy.

thanks

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
For the Newegg return policy, please refer to Newegg return policy
For the ASRock RMA policy, please visit at link “http://www.asrock.com/support/index.asp?cat=Policy” .
For the bent pins issue, the CPU socket on the mainboard has been covered with the protection CAP to avoid damage the pins during the shipping and should not be removed unless intend to install a CPU. The CPU socket pins on the mainboard are fragile and need to handle with carefully to avoid physical damage and may affect the warranty.
As always, we appreciate your purchase and constructive reviews are welcome.
If you have any technical issues or warranty questions please contact our Tech Support at 909-590-8308 or http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: I have to admit I have never spent this much for just the mb but I would buy another. This mb rocks! The utilities are great making overclocking a snap running an i7 3930 @ 4.2. Not impressed with Sata plugs under the gui but I dealt with it. After reading some of the other feedback with problems with the 2011 socket, I was concerned. I do have to say you have to be very careful, especially when mounting the cpu fan or cooling block. Doing it outside of the case is easy with the removable mb frame.

Cons: None

Pros: Lots of expandability, easy to use UEFI

Cons: Total lack of support sent email to tech support a week ago about the "easy raid installer": no reply. didn't even come with a sticker for my rig they responded to that 2 days later saying none were available and when they are I can pay $11 for one. I paid $650 for the board. Still can’t believe they offer such horrible customer service. I should bought ASUS

Other Thoughts: I will never by ASROCK again

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize that you having difficulty with RAID installation.
For the easy RAID installer, please visit at link "http://www.asrock.com/support/qa/TSDQA-89.pdf" and "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp0NSCP46qM"
If you have any technical issues or warranty questions please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Great board easy to overclock fast as heck, stylish color scheme tons of ports for almost anything you could want to add to a motherboard

Cons: Kinda heavy and quality seems to be hit or miss, kinda loud south bridge fan i'm not a silence freak so it doesn't bother me but if you want a silent pc this will be a problem (louder than the corsair fans that came with my C70 ALL 3 of them combine when it is a full throttle) and pcie locking tabs can be annoying when removing video cards (tend to slide back into a semilocked pisition)

Other Thoughts: Got a doa board but thanks to Newegg's excellent customer service I was up and running in 1 week total include the shipping to them and back great experience out if a potential disaster

Pros: Has everything I ever wanted in a motherboard.

Cons: No phone support really ASRock! What does your father (Asus) think about that Hmmm?

There are far to many boards being refused warranty due to bent pins for it not to be a little suspect!

I suspect that in addition to some customers bending pins that there is a quality control issue at the factory as well.

Other Thoughts: I really wanted this board to be the foundation of my next PC. The last PC I built cost over $7,000 in total so, a high priced board is not in itself a turn off as long as it has what I need and this board has it all.

But even brand new boards can have issues (my last one did) and good phone support is essential for quality customer service. You would think a $600 motherboard would have that!

Not only does this high end board come with low end support but, to many people are reporting the warranty killing bent CPU socket pin problem for me not to at least suspect that it isn't just a handling issue on the customer side.

Until you (ASRock) grow up and learn to have a little respect for the ones that feed you (your customers) I'll stick with your father (Asus)

To bad, this motherboard had the potential to be the best motherboard I ever owned.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. The CPU socket pins on the mainboard are fragile and need to be handling with carefully. In addition, the CPU socket is covered with the cap to avoid damage the pins and should not be removed until installing a CPU. Damaging socket pins should considered as physical damage, please refers to RMA policy at " http://www.asrock.com/support/index.asp?cat=Policy ". As always, we appreciate your purchase and constructive reviews are welcome.
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact our Tech Support at 909-590-8308 or http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: It got my 3930k stable to 5.1ghz @ 1.45v LLC2 on water. My previous RIVE only got the same chip stable to 5.0ghz.

PCI-E 3.0 comes native to the board. No hacks or registry edits needed.

PCI-E 3.0 at x16/x16/x16/x16 makes this board the most future proof board available.

Cons: Price. LSI can have compatibility issues with certain Raid configurations.

Pros: Excellent board electrical design, expansive connectivity options, very strong power delivery, excellent Asrock driver and bios update support, high bandwidth PCIE lanes, etc, etc.

Cons: Only one is that the southbridge X fan is loud when it spins up...it's cooling 4 chips.

Other Thoughts: I wanted to offer a useful review so I waited until I had the board running for a few months in daily use. This is my first hands on with an ASRock board. The board booted up right from the start with absolutely no issues. I'm running indows 8 Pro and I've run the board with both a 3930K and a 3970X. I kept the 3930K in the rig for now. Memory is 32 gigs GSkill 2133 over clocked. I've run multiple graphics cards, GTX 670 FTW's, single cards, high end Juli audiophile card, Asus wireless network card and multiple drive configs. I updated all the drivers but I've never bothered updating the bios at all. I'm running a light overclock at 4.4ghz with 1.27v and I can run Prime 95 small fft's for over 24 hours without a glitch. I've pushed the 3930K and 3970X both to a 4.85+ghz clock with ease at 1.42 v perfectly stable and the board can probably take it higher if I feel like it. The only con that I've had was the fan noise from the chip set block gets annoying and it seemed to always spin up regardless of the settings. The board is now water cooled with a MIPS nickel/ delrin water block set and I'm using an Apogee HD gold cpu block in a custom multi rad loop with separate GPU loop in Case Labs TH-10 case. The only addition that I plan to do soon, is to add 4 WD red drives or WD4 enterprise drives in a SAS array. All I can say is that I haven't had one single problem with this motherboard since the day I booted it up and loaded the drivers and Windows 8. I've benched it, overclocked it, water cooled it in numerous configurations, RAID arrayed it and it's sitting right here in my home office being quite and waiting for me to give it more to do. A very impressive motherboard and a beautiful office computer.

Pros: bottom line. does what i want it to do. wanted to build a base for testing sql server 2012 enterprise, hyper-v on windows server 2012 datacenter, and similar server based systems and still be somewhat useful as a work station. note that i added a aftermarket raid controller (enterprise level) and use a xeon processor.

Cons: very difficult to get working. rma'd first board, rma'd first set of memory. but if you want to be on bleeding edge your gonna bleed. this board had two things i wanted, xeon capability and a ton of PCI-X slots. end result with SSD and SAS 15k drives is its faster than the rack mount dual xeons running in our data centers.

Other Thoughts: good board if you want to build a workstation and have enough slots to try lots of different cards.

Pros: came with enough accessories to fill another junk drawer. A new egg rep was kind enough to troubleshoot my second board with me, just to find out i had just as much tech knowledge as he had.

Cons: My first board had to be RMAed in december because an audio jack didn't work. I can understand something small like that slipping through and having to be replaced. So i sent it off and realized after the fact that i left my cpu cooler stand offs in the board and called new egg. A representative assured me that the stand offs would be recovered and returned to me, I never got them back. I did finally receive the replacement after nearly a month of waiting and much to my dismay, one of the ram slots didn't work, so i boxed up my second MoBo and sent it back to newegg for an RMA. Another week went by and I finally found out that by the time the board got to their warehouse "the cpu pins were dented" and that voids the warranty. So they are shipping me back a broken board and told me good luck working with the company directly. Im out 500$ and have a useless MoBo and newegg has lost a once loyal customer.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear AsRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Sorry to hear the mainboard’s CPU socket pins have bent. The CPU socket pins on the mainboard are fragile and need to be handling with carefully. In addition, the CPU socket is covered with the cap to avoid damage the pins and should not be removed until installing a CPU. Please contact us at http://www.asrock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

AsRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@asrockamerica.com