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

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

Pros: -Lots of PCIe 3.0 slots so you can get four going at16x (very rare)
-Respectable on-board sound

Cons: 4 out of 8 DIMM slots work

Pros: Overwhelming Expandability
A lot of BIOS options
Color scheme (important for some)
Overclocks Well (regardless of what others say)
SB fan is temperature controlled, can easily be turned off
2x PLX chips for all of the PCI express lanes
LSI raid chip for 8x SATA3/SAS connetions
24+2 Power Delivery
Many more....

Cons: Expensive, but I can't complain
LOUD BIOS, can disable but can be annoying.
Not to many PWM fan headers
Not Intel Lan

Other Thoughts: This board is amazing. I was skeptical of buying ASRock at first but I am VERY happy with this perchase. I have my 3930k at 4.6GHz @ 1.36 volts, which is about what I see from my friends with the R4E. This board has more expansion than any normal user could imagine using but this board is NOT for a normal user. If you don't have deep pockets or this is not for a Extreme machine turn back now. Otherwise this is the perfect board for being "That guy" :D

Pros: -Lots of PCIe 3.0 slots so you can get four going at16x (very rare)
-Respectable on-board sound
-Tons SAS/SATA ports with on-board LSI controller

Cons: -BIOS is just silly, it looks like GeoCities personal homepage from 1995.
-XMP never worked with memory on the QVL
-Support, warranty, RMA process are all suspect
-Broke on me while updating to BIOS v2.0

Other Thoughts: I need to RMA my board because it hangs at code 19 from the instant it is powered on. You basically have to wait for them to email you back, which took days. There is no problem tracking system that where you can check on the status of your request. I'm impatiently waiting for them to get back to me.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear AsRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Code 19 related to memory and its controller.
Please remove CPU to check mainboard’s CPU socket pins should not be bent.
Reseat the CPU and cooler if the pins are normal.
Test with 1 stick memory in A1 slot, try another with another known good memory if it’s same issue.
If you have any technical questions 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

Pros: DOA

Cons: cant remember the last time i got a DOA motherboard, let alone a 600$ motherboard Oh that's right never haha! jokes on me!

Other Thoughts: Package was received in perfect condition tested on multiple power supplies. tested out of case on table with only CPU installed. Hit power button only to have it blink on and imminently power off then back on and so on.

This indicate board is DOA from electro static discharge or was defective from mfg. I would think Asrock would test a $600 board before shipping. With that said maybe they should start using a antistatic bag like 99% of all the other motherboards come in....(idk just thought it was odd that this one has no antistatic bag.)

I am no expert but have built enough computers in the last 14 years to know how to handle a mother board.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear AsRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please trouble shooting the mainboard for below steps with known good components;
Remove the mainboard from inside computer to outside. Place the mainboard on empty mainboard box
Clear the CMOS
Check the mainboard’s CPU socket pins should not be bent
Reseat the CPU with heatsink fan as well if socket pins are normal
Test with 1 memory module
Video card with 6+6 power (if applied)
Power supply with connecting 24 pins + 8 or 4 pins ATX power to the mainboard
Plug the computer case’s power switch to mainboard's front panel power header and try again
If you have any technical questions 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