Aside from MSI, the only other motherboard vendor to show off X99 motherboards here at Computex is ASRock, who had two motherboards on display. Unlike MSI, ASRock’s motherboards were well hidden among their lineup of Z97 motherboards.
The two motherboards ASRock had on display was the X99 Extreme4 and the X99 Extreme6. What’s interesting about these X99 motherboards is that the design between the two are quite similar with the exception that the Extreme6 includes additional USB 3.0 support, PCIe 1x slot, etc.
Both motherboards include the new LGA 2011-v3 socket to support Intel’s upcoming Haswell-E processors and will both support up to eight DIMMs of DDR4 memory in a quad channel configuration. They will also include a 12 phase Digi Power power delivery system, 12K platinum Japanese capacitors, premium alloy chokes, dual stack mosfets, support for 3-way SLI/4-way CrossFire, M.2, SATA 6Gb/s, and more.
No word on pricing or availability, but they should arrive sometime later this year.
The Extreme 4 although showing four X16 slots for PCIe will probably only allow the 1 and 3 slot to run full speed for Crossfire or SLI.
Using all four slots will most likely limit it to 4,4,4,4.
Hopefully the Extreme 6 wil allow Tri SLI/ Crossfire on all three X16 slots at full speed.
The addition of a Molex connector on the board is a good clue to the extra power needed for this on both boards.
I noticed the Extreme6 has an unusual placement for a USB socket on the Motherboard, as well as a socket below the CPU socket that I don’t recognize, possibly SATAe?
The addition of a mini PCIe socket for WiFi is handy, saves using a PCIe socket for a full sized card.