Question 1

HI !

IS THIS MOTHERBOARD COMPATIBLE WITH "WINDOWS 10 OPERATING SYSTEM" ?

Accepted Answer

Yes it is. You can download the Windows 10 drivers and utilities from the ASRock website in the event that it does not ship with them included.

Question 2

Does this board come with an M.2 to SFF-8643 adapter?

Accepted Answer

I've had two of these boards. I purchased them about 6 months ago. Neither of the two came with a M.2 to SFF-8643 adapter.

Question 3

Does this product come with a processor. If so what type, I7? I5? Quad Core? 6 Core?

Accepted Answer

No, this is just the motherboard.  This motherboard comes with some basic accessories, including a handfull of SATA cables, a few screws, as well as a selection of SLI bridges in a "hard" circuit board style for various types of graphics card placement.

You will need to purchase a processor separately for this board.

As this is the new 2011-v3 socket, you will need to use an Intel Core i7 Haswell EP or business class Xeon EP processor.

You will also need to purchase DDR4 memory, as this motherboard is not compatible with DDR3.

Question 4

I want to install 4 Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 Ti's into this board, is that possible? Does the board have the physical space for that?

Accepted Answer

I would go with 2 1080GTX cards.  4 980TI will work with a 5930 or better CPU. You do need all 40 Lanes but will be at 8X speeds per slot and since so close together there will be a heat problem. 2 1080GTX will  best 4 -980TI cards on majority of benchmarks..  My single 1080 GTX will beat in most benchs 2 980GTX cards in SLI. 2 1080 GTX are also running at 16X speeds. Take less power
are more efficient  and you will not have a heat problem.  24NM vs 16NM another plus with the 1080GTX cards. and they have 8GB of xddr5 ram. They run cooler, take less power and you can add a 3rd card. 3-1080GTX cards will spank 4 980ti GTX cards with half the power.

Question 5

I havent been able to find this anywhere. What are the amp rating on the fan connectors? I'm running a pretty intense air cooling system (9 fans) off of this motherboard and will need to split slots on the motherboard in order to wire them that way. Otherwise I will need to get a controller.

Accepted Answer

I do not have the answer as to how the amp ratings for the fan headers.

I have this mobo in a Cooler master HAF-X with 6 fans. I wouldn't recommending splitting the fan headers to multiple fans more than may be once for a dual or triple CPU fan set up.

You can use a molex power chord to power some of you fans and/or get an after market fan controller that will take input from one or more of the fan headers on the mobo and power from a molex or sata power chord off of your PSU. I hope this helps.

Question 6

Does this board come with an M.2 to SFF-8643 adapter?

Accepted Answer

It has one M.2 slot that will feed it via 4x PCIe lanes. They call it Ultra M.2. Any M2. SSD should work. But for compatibility seek information from ASROCK. Good luck.

Question 7

Is this compatible with the I7-4820 CPU?

Accepted Answer

No sorry buddy, that's the 2011 socket. This is 2011-3 socket which is not compatible.

Question 8

Does this motherboard support a Xeon Phi coprocessor? (For some preliminary particle simulations.)

Accepted Answer

While this board does have the I/O mapping above 4GB support needed (added in a post release BIOS update), ASRock has indicated that this board will have full Xeon/Phi support.  I have not yet found a QVL listing yet for it, however.  You may want to reach out directly to ASRock support.

Question 9

What is the main difference between this and the much more expensive WS-E? I see this has faster m.2 and the WS-E has an extra 16x pcie lane. I feel like i must be missing something.

Accepted Answer

Had to decide between the WS and WS-E for a second build for a friend. Not Sure what the E relates to unless it means extended for the additional PCI-e slot.  ALso, the WS version specs are better if you want to use the M2 PCI-e slot as it is rates as PCI-e 3.0 whereas the slot in the the "E" version is rated as PCI-e 2.0.  Curious this is!. Still, might be a good idea to check with ASROCK. In any case, the WS version has been running fast and hard for over a year now, and the new build with a 6850K is lightning fast. I'd say, save your dough and get the WS (unless you are planning to do massive SLI - and for that I'd say just get a GTX1080 or 1070.

Question 10

For this board and the PCIe configurations, does PCIe5 use a PCIe 2.0 video board?  Are all PCIe 2.0 x16 boards actually x4?  If not, what is the purpose of a PCIe 2.0 x16 that runs in x4 mode?

Accepted Answer

The PCIe 2.0 x4 slot is connected to the PCH lanes. It's usually used for storage controllers, network cards, sound cards, etc. It can also  be used for a dedicated CUDA/PhysX GPU or for a low-spec GPU that's connected to a secondary monitor for 2D or light 3D work. The second part of your question, x16 cards are all electrically 16 lanes wide. 2.0 and 3.0 specifies the data rate over those lanes. A x16 2.0 or 3.0 card will fit and run fine in a x4 electrical, x16 physical slot. If they made it a x4 physical, x4 electrical slot you'd have fewer configuration and expansion options and less flexibility.  It's always best to use the highest width and speed slot your card supports. Some non-GPU cards are 1x or 4x 2.0. It makes sense to put those on the slower slot(s), leaving the x16 3.0 slots for the GPU's.

Questions & Answers