ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard Review

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard Layout

Overall I like the look of the ASUS P9X79 Pro. It has the same color scheme that we have seen on the non Republic of Gamers boards that we have looked at recently.

The area around the CPU socket is rather crowded. We have a series of solid capacitors on the right hand side of the LGA2011 socket. The most obvious feature of the ASUS P9X79 Pro is the DIMM slots. The ASUS P9X79 features support for quad channel memory and has a grand total of eight DIMM slots! Each of the eight DIMM slots will support an 8GB module for a total of 64GB of system memory. The ASUS P9X79 will support memory at speeds of up to 2400MHz! Just below the DIMM slots we have a number of features that are typical on ASUS motherboards. Among these is the internal SuperSpeed USB 3.0 header, MemOK!, DRAM LED, and a pair of 4pin Chassis Fan Headers, and to the right of the bottom set of DIMM slots we have a pair of 4pin CPU headers.

Spinning the ASUS P9X79 Pro around, we can take a look at what’s going on in this corner of the motherboard. The first feature that stands out to us is the SSD Caching. This is a feature that isn’t available through the chipset, so ASUS has implemented their own solution. Since it isn’t available through the chipset, ASUS uses a Marvell 88SE9128 SATA III controller. In order to enable this feature, all you need is an SSD, a hard drive, and ASUS AI Suite II. It’s a simple one click setup and you’re good to go. The Intel X79 chipset supports six SATA ports, two SATA III 6Gbps (white) and four SATA II 3Gbps (Light blue). On the corner of the ASUS P9X79 Pro we have the pin out for the front panel, TPU switch, 4pin Chassis fan, Clear CMOS button, and three internal USB 2.0 headers.

Swinging the ASUS P9X79 Pro around once again, we can pick up where we left off along the edge of the PCB. Just past the internal USB 2.0 headers is the EPU switch followed by an onboard reset and power switch. We also have the pin out for the front panel audio and SPDIF out. The final feature along the edge of the ASUS P9X79 Pro is the Debug LED. The ASUS P9X79 Pro is equipped with four PCIe X16 slots and two PCIe x1 slots. The Intel X79 chipset supports 32 PCIe lanes and will run quad SLI. The ASUS P9X79 Pro will support 3 Way SLI or Quad-GPU SLI. It also supports CrossFireX with two cards and two dual GPU cards. The ASUS P9X79 Pro uses a Realtek ALC898 Audio Codec high def Audio Codec, the super I/O controller is a NUVOTON NCT6776F, for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ASUS has implemented an ASMedia ASM 1042 controller.

The ASUS P9X79 Pro I/O panel features a total of ten USB ports, four (blue) of which are SuperSpeed USB 3.0. The P9X79 Pro is also equipped with two eSATA, optical SPDIF, GIGABIT LAN, Bluetooth, six audio jacks, and a Clear CMOS button.