ASUS WS X299 SAGE LGA 2066 Intel X299 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 CEB Motherboards - Intel

Pros: 7 PCI-e lanes 7 PCI-e lanes Now officially supports the 9th gen i7 and i9 lines. Supports up to 128gb RAM Fairly well designed board with great overclocking ability Nice classy subdued look to it and not like many of Asus boards that are in your face. It is great board for those who want to game, edit videos, run multiple VM's, GPGPU simulations, etc. Inputs for plenty of power for CPU and video cards. It utilizes two 8 pin CPU connectors and down near the PCI-e slot 1 there is a 6 pin PCI-e connector.

Cons: The main problem I have with the board is that it will NOT run the processor at stock frequency. I realize no one buys an expensive Intel x processor without overclocking it, but I always like to get baseline from all new machines. Then, I incrementally bump and test, bump and test. This one, correctly detects my i9-9980X but it won't run it at 3.0ghz but instead 3.8ghz, even in the BIOS. Then, it often bumps it beyond that once in Windows. The additional bump may be due to Intel's Turbo Boost 3.0. Regardless, I should have to initiate the overclocking on my board. I have even cleared the CMOS, reset all my custom settings, etc. Some of the fan headers are at weird places. One of the chassis fan header is in line with PCI-e #1, directly underneath the GPU. As a result, it would have to be extremely bent over to try to use it. One M.2 slot can get restricted air flow depending on GPU arrangement. The other one stands up vertically in the way. No USB 2.0 slots (for front USB ports or more importantly for AIO pumps). I wish they'd take off the RGB headers and give us one of them instead. PLX chips run quite hot Initially it appeared the bright red 'boot code display' on the bottom of the motherboard could not be turned off. I don't know if it truly wasn't there, or if I just didn't find it. However, when setting it all back up after installing the latest 905 update, there is now an option to turn it off once it has finished booting.

Overall Review: I wish they would have put connectors in a little different spot, especially the fan header that is inline with PCI-e slot 1. The advertisement on their website mentions all the temperature sensors and how you can use that to control your fan speed but I haven't found much as to which sensor(s) control which fan(s). The system is: Asus WS x299 Sage Intel i9-9980x 128gb of GSkill DDR-4 Samsung 2TB NVMe M.2 drive Two EVGA 2080ti's with Asus NVLink between them Antec HCP-1000 power supply. Asus BD-RW Fractal Design - Define R6 Blackout case (very well designed case)

Pros: Good VRM heatsink keeps cool and also comes with a small 40 mm fan just in case. Was able to overclock my i9 7940x@4700 mhz. Also comes with 2 PLX switches to run 1,3,5,7 at x16 and if you use all 7 slots at x8. 2 Eight pin connectors for cpu and a 6 pin connector for power to the PLX switches. 8 true power phases for overclocking HCC cpu. On board audio sounds great. The 2 m.2 slots cannot run in raid due to one runs on cpu lanes and the other on the pch. The m.2 near the cpu can run raid with the u.2 slots on the motherboard. AI suite works okay but I uninstalled. update 02/06/2019: Cpu is still running great was able to overclock 100 mhz more to 4800 mhz on cpu. But because of summer temps are a warmer and had to increase voltage to 1.30. If I stress all cores temp hit 95 C. I am now able to run my ram at 3466 mhz. Also new bios from ASUS 0905 is out.

Cons: none running motherboard for over a month with no problems so far.

Overall Review: system specs i9 7940x@4800 mhz on all cores at 1.30 volt water-cooled WS x299 Sage Evga 1600 T2 psu 2 Evga gtx 1080 ti Kingpin water-cooled with Bitspower water block 2 plextor mvme with nvme to u.2 adaptor work great 1 Samsung 970 evo 2TB nvme drive for O/S Corsair 64gb 3466 mhz . 3 HGST 10tb in raid 0 Corsair 780T case Water cooling CPU and GPU's with 2 360 mm radiator 30 mm and 60 mm, 1 280 30 mm radiator. Pump and reservoir comb all from alphacool Keep temps on cpu great with O/C.

Pros: Easy To Set UP. Runs my i7 7820X with no problems. Have 2 660TI's in SLi mode. Plenty of USB and Sata ports and hookups. Has a very high quality look and feel. Very stable and cool running with my Xtreme 11X Cooler

Cons: None so Far. No problems with this board at all.

Overall Review: Highly Recommended Motherboard for Intel X299

Pros: - Solid, stable performance. - Supported i9-7940X at 4.7GHz all cores stable. - 64GB DDR4 3466 ram at rated specs without issue (using XMP). - Flexibility with 7 PCIe.

Cons: - Limited Thunderbolt expansion card slot option.

Overall Review: - Recommended for long term dependability. I've been using Asus motherboards for over a decade without a hiccup.

Pros: Plenty of expansion slots, looks very sleek, can easily overclock my 7920x to 4.5ghz

Cons: Board is a little buggy, at ,least in terms of the expansion slots and peripheral cards, especially sound cards. I tried two separate Asus sound cards and I get an error 10 in device manager on both, even after disabling onboard sound. I was able to get a Creative Labs sound card to work but only in the 6th pcie slot. If I put it in any other slot, it clashes with my Areca RAID card and I cannot boot. I have none of these problems in my other x299 Extreme RIG board. I am sure a BIOS update will fix it, but very disappointing that this wasn't caught in their QA labs.