ASRock X99 WS LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I have been using this in my primary Win Server 2012R2 Home Media Server.
I have had zero issues so far. The system has run 24 hours a day and has not been turned off in over 2 months.
Can use Xeon or i7 CPU and ECC RAM or Plain DDR4 RAM (XEON CPU required for 128GB and ECC support)

Cons: None that I can think of.
Not really a con, but quality costs money. I believe in buying "right" the first time vs. the headaches of trying to save $20-$50 going cheap and dealing with continued headaches.

Other Thoughts: Intel E5-1620 v3 CPU. I picked this for the high 3.5MHz clock and 40 PCI express lanes vs in entry level i7 with 28 lanes. I need the lanes to run a pair of x8 LSI RAID cards and a x8 10GB Ethernet adapter and a video card. I use a set of Klevv Cras (4x4GB) RAM sticks. Because I am running a Xeon I cannot run the RAM at it's native speed of DDR4 3000 but instead at 2133. This matters little to me. This setup is extreme overkill for a home server. The CPU (4core 8thread) never even sees 10% work loads. I seldom use 3GB of the 16GB of RAM installed. I also use this with an eVGA 850watt G2 gold rated power supply connected to a Cyberpower 1500 watt UPS. The rack case has 15 hard drives (4, 5 and 6TB) and a pair of SSDs in RAID 1 (mirror) mode for a boot drive. This entire setup only pulls 135watts of power. Amazing.
This replaces a quirky SuperMicro Socket 1155 E3 motherboard that got flaky after a year.
I am very pleased with this setup as I now have quality components throughout.

Pros: - Processors supported
- 128GB memory (with Xeon)
- PCIe lane distribution
- Dual INTEL LAN (not 2 diff types of NICs)

Cons: - Problems booting 64GB of G.Skill at 2400
- Only one USB 3.0 on board
- Would prefer more 4-pin fan connectors
- Apparently ASRock's support is not very good

Other Thoughts: Its tough to rate this board at 3/5 because in the end it is a very nice mobo, but a few things are erking me...

On the plus side, the board cuts up PCIe lanes from a 5820k perfectly (8x8x4x8), and with the m.2 slot populated with a PCIe 3.0 SSD the 3rd slot (the x4) is disabled. This is hard to find on any other manufacturer's boards, like Asus. If you're running dual video cards in slots 1&2 like I did, that x4 slot is covered anyway so this is perfect! You can ignore the manual telling you to use slots 1 & 4 to run dual video cards; its not necessary.

Also, if you plan on teaming NICs, you either want this board or a dedicated PCIe adapter as you'll want the same two NICs. I never understood putting 2 different NICs on a motherboard.

I've always like ASRock's BIOS's. As of this review date, they're at 1.7, which is required to recognize Samsung SM951 SSDs I found. They released 1.7 about 6mths ago. HOWEVER, the board will not load 64GB of G.Skill 2400 RAM (F4-2400C15Q-32GRK) at 2400. In fact, XMP won't even get it to 2133 on its own, I had to manually configure timings, and even then I'd get an occasional Dr Debug code on 1/4 boots. After a cold boot it would boot normally. I had to manually set BLCK to 100 to resolve this.

Oddly enough, BIOS 1.6 would make XMP at least auto set the memory to 2133 ok, but then my m.2 SM951 wasn't recognized. Also, at bios 1.7, if I took 32GB of the memory out, XMP would load 32GB just fine at 2400, and yes, I tried each 32GB kit separately and they both worked fine on their own.

I contacted ASRock support and they (Eric) just replies and says they've tested F4-2400C15Q-16GRR and I should contact G.Skill for a memory swap. First of all, I need 32GB kits, not 16! Second, the ONLY difference between xxxGRR and xxxGRK (which I used) is the color of the heat sink!!! Its the exact same memory! I replied stating such, and asked if they were aware and/or working on a new BIOS, and got NO reply.

Pros: Works as advertised. Great performance. Great service from Newegg.

Cons: The literature doesn't tell you that the i7's will only address 64GB and that you'll need a Xeon if you think you are going to use 128GB of RAM. The motherboard ships with an ancient BIOS....upgrade right away before you do anything else with this board.

Other Thoughts: After many years of purchasing with Newegg I had a very defective motherboard that caused problems with the RAM kit I also purchased. I was a bit nervous how this would be handled but without skipping a beat Newegg replaced both items and everything worked like a charm on the new gear.

Pros: Nothing to add before I get the motherboard to boot

Cons: Nothing to add before I get the motherboard to boot

Other Thoughts: I don't have a review yet as I'm getting Code 60. I have the i7-5960x cpu and 128GB non-ECC memory. I've removed the memory and cpu and reset the cmos according the manufacturer instructions. I've tried 4 sticks of ram, 2 sticks, and finally 1 - always resetting the cmos at each step. I cannot get past code 60. If I try booting the motherboard with no memory I get code 53, so I'm inclined to believe I'm having issue with the 16GB sticks paired to this particular cpu.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please verify the code again whether 60 or b0 (lower case B).
If b0, please turn the power off, clear the CMOS.
Test with single memory module on A1 slot.
Populate the memory to B1,C1 and D1 if its post.

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp. We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp

Pros: Stable, does what it should. Lots of expansion. Good uefi bios recovery. Handles Xeon with EEC ram great.

Audio quality is very good, can drive my headphones without external amp.

Automated in uefi bios driver install is really nice.

Cons: Hard to find the TPM module... seems to be special order in the USA

Odd placement of PCIe power port at bottom edge of motherboard. Need a right angle, slim connector in smaller e-atx cases. Doesn't come with one.

Back side of motherboard not fully washed.

Other Thoughts: ASROCK XFast ram software option is not so good. Slow scsi emulation, Auto backup slows writes to lower than write speed to drive.

64GB KVR21R15D4K4/64 passes ram testing

Pros: Great product. Not one issue. I love the error readout on the MB. Saved me when my server wouldn't boot. Turns out I had the ram in wrong. Go figure. After reading the book, turns out you need to have one set filled up before using the other slots.

Cons: Nothing to report. happy with it thus far

Other Thoughts: ASRock went from a nobody, to a pretty decent company. I would not be worried about using them ever again. I have another ASRock MB in a personal computer, that is a Xeon away from being a server as well. No issues at all, and it never turns off.

Pros: I won't get into the motherboard specs, as they are spelled out in the product listing, and many reviews below have touched on the tech specs of this board.

I'll cut to the chase - the motherboard looks great, has plenty of I/O both internally and externally, and performs solidly in a high-end digital content creation workstation. I use my system for heavy video editing and rendering, game development in Unity, and 3D modeling, animation, and rendering in Maya. Pairing the board with 16GB of RAM (32GB when prices drop) and a 6-core i7 CPU allows me to get my work done faster - period.

I would say the price is reasonable for a high-end LGA 2011-v3 motherboard. It's nice to see that there is finally an affordable, stable board for us "power-users" that depend on reliable hardware.

I have only had the board up and running for a few weeks now, so I will update the review later on should any issues arise.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Build details:

Intel i7 6-core 5820k

Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR4 2133 CT2K8G4DFD8213/CT2C8G4DFD8213

Nanoxia Deep Silence 2 Mid Tower Case

480GB SSD primary

Several 2TB and 3TB 7200RPM Sata III media drives

Nvidia GeForce Titan GPU

EVGA SuperNOVA 750B1 750W ATX12V Power Supply 110-B1-0750-VR

Pros: I tested the ASRock X99 WS, LGA 2011-v3, Intel X99, motherboard. This server/workstation motherboard features the latest X99 chipset from Intel. It requires an Intel i7 Haswell-E/EP, or Xeon processor designed to run in a socket LGA 2011-v3 motherboard. The "-E" after Haswell above denotes that this is an enthusiast's, or high-end processor.

System summary:

Windows 10 Pro Preview, build 9926 (64-bit) OS.

Intel® Core™ i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz/4.0GHz Turbo.

Corsair H80i CPU water cooling Kit w/2x 120mm Fans.

Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 16GB SDRAM (P/N: CMK16GX4M4A2400C14).

ASRock X99 WS, LGA 2011-v3, Intel X99 motherboard (BIOS Ver. P1.60).

Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce GT-740 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card.

Samsung 850 Pro Series, 256GB, SSD Boot Drive.

LG model WH16NS40 BlueRay Optical Drive.

Rosewill Capstone-750W, Intel Haswell Ready, 80 PLUS GOLD, Active PFC Power Supply

AFT XM-37U USB 3.0, 3.5" Kiosk Card Reader

The new major features this motherboard offers are: Intel® Core™ i7 and Xeon® E5-1600/2600 v3 processor family support for the LGA 2011-v3 socket, up to 18 Cores and 160W, Quad Channel DDR4 3000+(O.C.) memory, with max. capacity up to 128GB, (ECC on Xeon only), AMD 4-Way CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® 4-Way SLI™, 2x PCI-E X16 devices, Ultra M.2 socket for (PCI-E v3 x4 & SATA-3 Pro) and two Intel gigabit Ethernet ports.

It's interesting to note that two of the PCI-E v3.0 X16 slots connect directly to the Haswell CPU, bypassing the slower X99 Northbridge PCI-E 2.0 bus. The X99 Northbridge operates the other PCI-E v2.0 slots and devices, including: the SATA-3, USB 2 & 3 ports, and the Southbridge Super I/O chip, Etc. Note if an M.2 card is installed, it will disable slot number four of the six PCI-E slots.

The ASRock driver install disk worked perfectly under Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Preview, just select the Windows 8.1 drivers. The latest Nvidia Windows 8.1 graphics driver also ran stable under Windows 10 Preview.

Cons: The UEFI BIOS was rather slow at completing the BIOS POST process, as compared to other brands of UEFI BIOS I have worked with recently. Once the BIOS handed the system control over to Windows, Windows 10 booted-up very quickly to the lock screen. The Samsung 850 Pro SSD drive helped a lot during this latter stage of the boot process.

The BIOS setup was hard to access during reboots. There was an extremely narrow time window between when the USB keyboard was enabled and you could hit the Delete or F2 keys to enter the UEFI BIOS. ASRock to their credit provided a Windows utility that when clicked-on was supposed to reboot to the BIOS, but it seldom worked correctly during my testing.

Although the Corsair DDR4 SDRAM installed was rated for DDR4-2400 speed, the most I could eek out of this CPU/memory/motherboard combo was DDR4-2200. Anything faster and Windows 10 would refuse to install, or would crash during the boot process. This makes one wonder why bother with the more expensive DDR4, when DDR3 SDRAM can easily hit these speeds? I find it odd that a DDR4 motherboard is in over-clock mode at DDR-2133 memory speeds? Articles I read point the blame at Intel's onboard Haswell CPU quad memory controller.

ASRock only provided two 4-pin PWM fan ports, four fan ports in total. I would have expected at least 6-8 fan ports on a motherboard in this price range. As a result I had to operate the three central 140mm case fans in my 4U rack mount case on 7 VDC, by rewiring their Molex adapter plugs, to reduce the case fan noise.

Other Thoughts: Please note I will be reviewing the Corsair DDR4 memory used in this motherboard test in another separate review. Special thanks go out to Corsair and NewEgg for providing the DDR4 SDRAM to help me perform this motherboard review.

This ASRock motherboard has some cool features: It has a nice BIOS update tool built right into the UEFI BIOS. This tool can connect to one of four ASRock servers around the world, download and install the latest BIOS update. This BIOS update process worked perfectly when I tested it. It also has a special 4-pin "HDD-Saver" SATA power port and dual power cable, that can turn-on/off two mechanical SATA hard drives, via a remote Internet interface. This can be used to extend the life of two data hard drives or for security reasons and would be handy in a remote server situation. It also has an M.2, 4x socket. This new M.2 socket is intended for a new generation of flash drive cards that attaches directly to the Intel CPU/PCI-E v3.0 expansion bus. Supposedly M.2 cards can transfer data up to 6x faster than conventional SATA-3 ports. I will write another review if I can get one of these cards to test.

During my brief two-week testing period, the motherboard ran cool and stable, as you would expect from a high quality server/workstation motherboard. The quality of the onboard solid capacitors, inductors and chipset heat sink tubes was excellent. Due to the poor over-clocking experience, gamers may want to look elsewhere. Also keep in mind that X99 CPU's do not include built-in graphics. I used a relatively modest Nvidia GT-740 graphics card, as this system is going to be used as a Linux file server by my client. Even with this compromise the overall WEI score was still 8.1, with the processor and memory both scoring an incredible 8.8!

If used as a server MB, the slow booting BIOS noted under Cons, would not be an issue, as servers are seldom rebooted. With its retail price dropping, this DDR4 motherboard represents an excellent cost to value ratio. I highly recommend it when used for its intended Server/Workstation purpose.

Pros: reviewed twenty four X99 mobo - this is the only one that support MS Server 2008/2012. Very stable. Using NZXT X61 Kraken with Push/Pull (4 fans) - with 64 GB.

my build:
Intel i7-5820K
64GB - Crucial (8 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 2133 (PC4-17000)
EVGA 04G-P4-3768-KR GeForce GTX 760 FTW 4GB
ASROCK X99 WS
SeaSonic SS-1200XP3 - 1200W 80 PLUS PLATINUM
NZXT Phantom 530 White
NZXT Kraken X61 for CPU
Extra Fans: NZXT FX 140LB PWM (for Push / Pull)

look for my build on youtube - X99 Asrock WS DDR4 64GB Kraken X61 NZXT Phantom 530

Cons: None at the moment

Other Thoughts: Stable mobo - BUT I'm not using it for any overclocking at the moment. Multi-Boot - Server 2008, System 7, Server 2012

Pros: Solid entry into the x99 market.

Cons: None now.

Other Thoughts: My earlier review reflected my disappointment with this board's complete inability to overclock memory or CPU. Starting with BIOS revision 1.40 that has been remedied, and BIOS 1.50 addresses my specific processor (Haswell-E 5930K). Now it overclocks very well, the sky's the limit. I can heartily recommend this motherboard now, it performs extremely well and has all the features you could want in a very solid build. I wish I could edit my previous review now that these problems are straightened out, but hopefully 5 eggs will help balance it out.