ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Review

Overclocking

We didn't even attempt to overclock our monstrous Core i7-5960X using the bundled air cooler, and instead used a Cooler Master Seidon 120 V2 we had to hand. We also bumped the TJMax up to a manual 105°C just to make sure that if we ran into close calls,we had a bit of extra room to spare.

Thankfully we didn't need it as the Seidon 120 V2 did a fairly good job of reigning in the temperatures using the included adaptor so we can definitely recommend it if you're considering the X99E-ITX/ac.

Our usual settings of 4.3GHz and 1.3V didn't result in a happy ending, and we had to bump the latter up to 1.35V to get the X99E-ITX/ac to play ball. The temperatures were in the high 80's here with an ambient temperature of 24°C so we called it quits but this is right up there with many other full-size X99 boards we've tested.

EFI

The EFI is pretty similar to other ASRock motherboards we've tested. It's a solid effort, easy to use and we maxed out our CPU in a matter of minutes. It's a bit dated compared to the latest Asus and MSI boards though.

If ASRock wants to further better its stance in the enthusiast industry (it's already done a good job with boards such as the Fatal1ty X99M Killer) then we'd like to see some forward progress here. You get the basics and simple speed-boosting features such as multi core enhancement and XMP are all easy to get at and there's a handy fan profile control suite too.











Head over the page to see the Performance Analysis, Conclusion and Scores.