Intel X99 Motherboard Goes Up in Smoke For Reasons Unknown

This morning I woke up bright and early to benchmark some DDR4 memory kits and found myself waking up not to Folgers in your cup, but the smell of burnt electrical after loading the XMP profiles on a memory kit and restarting the system. Let me tell you what happened, the best I can.

ASUS X99 Deluxe

On Friday I spent the day wrapping up the benchmarks on the Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 16GB (4x4GB) 3000MHz quad-channel memory kit (part number HX430C15PBK4/16) that runs at 1.5V. This morning I wanted to get another kit of DDR4 memory tested, so the system was powered down, the CMOS was reset and a G.Skill 16GB (4x4GB) 3000MHz memory kit (F4-3000C15Q-16GRR) was installed and powered up the system.  It posted fine, so I went into the UEFI and set it to run at the only XMP profile on the kit. The UEFI changes were saved and the system restarted. It was during the next seconds that both the board and the processor would be killed off in a rather unspectacular death. The system came up, hung for a very short time and then powered off with a audible click of the Corsair AX860i power supply. If you’ve ever heard the loud click of the Over Current Protection (OCP) shutting down the PSU you know exactly what click I heard. Now when I press power button on the motherboard the system clicks after being on for a split second.  I unplugged all the cables on the power supply and did the built-in self-check and it passed with flying colors. I swapped out the PSU with a backup Corsair AX860i and the same click was to be heard. After clearing the CMOS, removing the memory, SSD and video card the system still wouldn’t post. At that point in time I switched to a non-digital power supply (Corsair AX1200) and it did the same thing although this time the OCP took a little longer to kick in. There was some audible crackling noises, followed by some smoke near the CPU VRM heatsink. So, the heart shattering smell of burnt electronics filled the room and I knew my day wasn’t going to be a good one.

ASUS X99 Deluxe Motherboard Burned

I removed the board from the test bench and started to do a visual inspection and couldn’t see anything wrong with any of the components on the front or back of the board. I know where the smoke came from, so I removed the VRM heatsink and the burnt electrical smell got stronger. There was some discoloration new to where one of the mosfets sits on the thermal pad, so clearly it was a failure of CPU voltage regulation system and one of the eight 60 Amp phases (Dr. MOS IOR 3550M mosfets) has appeared to fail.

ASUS X99 Deluxe Motherboard Blown Up

It isn’t burnt badly at all, but you can some of the signs of an electrical failure on the second power phase from the bottom.

ASUS X99 Deluxe power phases

Looking at the board we can see that the failed component in question is part of the PQ1004, which is part of the VCCIN or basically the processor input voltage. Crap! On these Haswell-E processors, Intel has moved the voltage regulation on-CPU as part of the new Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator (FIVR). Previously there were five separate input voltages the motherboard handled: Vcore, Vgpu, VCCSA, VCCIO, and the PLL. On Intel Haswell-E processors all five internal power rails are pulled from the single VCCIN and the components on ours just had a nuclear meltdown.

ASUS X99 Deluxe Power Phase Melted

You can tell things got pretty hot as there were actually solder balls where they weren’t supped to be!

Our worst fears were confirmed when we pulled out our backup ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard and put the original Intel Core-i7-5960X processor in and the system wouldn’t post. The boards debug display showed Q-Code 00, which is a bad sign. We tossed in our backup Intel Core i7-5960X processor and the system booted up just fine and we are off and able to benchmark again. The bad news is that I managed to kill an ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard ($398.99 shipped) and an Intel Core i7-5960X processor ($1049.99 Shipped) after using it for less than two weeks, which is a bit unusual and why I am sharing information about this failure to the readers of Legit Reviews. It is not an everyday occurrence where $1450 in hardware gets put out to pasture.

LR isn’t the only site that has had a board go up in smoke as Michael Larabel over at Phoronix had an X99 board go up in smoke as well. He was not using the same brand of motherboard or power supply model, but to see X99 boards failing this early in the game is alarming.

I’ve been in contact with ASUS, Intel, Corsair and Kingston and no one is exactly sure what happened to our system. Was running 1.50V on the DDR4 memory too much? Is there something wrong with the VRM design or did we have a bad component on our motherboard? Was the power supply faulty? We aren’t sure, but we are going to be overnighting this board back to ASUS Taiwan on Monday (9/8/2014) and we have arranged for Corsair to put our PSU on their scopes and test equipment to make sure it is working properly.

We’ll let you know what happens if we find anything out in the weeks ahead!

 

Update 9/9/2014 - ASUS has received the X99 Deluxe motherboard that failed along with the power supply that was in the unit at the time of the failure. An ASUS employee will be taking the PSU to Corsair for testing on 9/10/2014. The board will be looked at here in the US and then will be shipped to ASUS HQ in Taiwan. In the meantime we have two ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboards being used by staff members that are still up and working properly and we have been told by ASUS that they have replicated out exact system and that they tested it overnight and haven’t experienced any failures. We’ll keep you updated and will post the actual Chroma test results from the PSU once we get them from Corsair. It was also learned in the past 24 hours that the ‘high’ DDR4 voltage (1.35 to 1.5V) that we were using on the board shouldn’t have caused any issues since the memory controller in Haswell-E can actually support DDR3 and DDR4, although only DDR4 is being implemented. DDR3 memory kits run at 1.5V, so that almost eliminates that from being the issue. The good thing about posting publicly about this failure is that all the companies involved are taking this seriously and are working overtime to ensure there isn’t an issue somewhere. We are really glad about that as we have recommended the board, processor and power supply and want to ensure that the platform works if our readers purchase the parts based on our recommendations.

board-delivered

Update 9/11/2014 - ASUS HQ in Taiwan has the motherboard and is looking at it now. ASUS and Corsair were unable to get the power supply tested on Tuesday and scheduled a time with Corsair to get the power supply on the Chroma tester on Friday 9/12/2014. This was the earliest that the Chroma tester was available for use during business hours.

Corsair Chroma PSU Tester

Update 9/13/2014 - Corsair along with ASUS tested the pair of AX860i power supply that Legit Reviews was using on the test bench at the time of failure on Friday the 12th. Both power supplies passed the initial Chroma test passes, but we learned something that we previously did not know.  When the Corsair AXi series of power supplies came out in 2012 they featured a single rail design. Corsair switched to a multiple rail design for the power supply series in 2013 (previously unknown to us). This is obviously a significant difference in the design of the power supply. We also learned that the earlier single rail power supplies did not have OCP enabled by default. One would have to install the Corsair Link Software package and manually set the OCP limits manually for that to function on the earlier models. We were not using the Corsair Link Software on the test bench, so therefore our power supply could have 90A or more potentially running down the rail. This might have exacerbated the damage to the CPU’s VR circuit if there was a bad component or solder ball joint present.

scanWe looked around at Newegg, Amazon, Scan and other major online retailers and have the Corsair AX860i as having a single +12V rail. Heck, even Corsair.com has it listed as having a single rail! Hopefully now that this has come to light the folks at Corsair can update their own site and get retailers to properly list the specifications of this PSU in the listings.

ASUS is still working with the failed board and is going to be replicated our setup with the power supplies in Taiwan. Yes, these two power supplies have now been shipped to Taiwan where ASUS HQ will be able to test our first revision AX860i Power Supplies as the ones they were testing with this past week trying to replicate our system without failure was done using the new post-2013 power supplies. The exact cause of the fault is not known, but much is being learned by everyone and most of it is valuable information that will help the community. We’ll report back with more once ASUS is ready to give us an update that is ready for public consumption. That will happen after additional testing is done on the board over the days ahead.

Update 9/16/2014 -  We are still working with Corsair to find out more on the firmware update that was done on their power supplies back in 2013. We have asked for dates and power supply lot numbers, so users can find out if they have one of the original ‘old’ AXi series power supplies that has no OCP by default. We also pointed out to Corsair that there is no mention of this in the instruction manual and that many users might not be aware that their flagship PSU has features that aren’t enabled unless they do so manually. From the sounds of it Corsair just updated the firmware and went to a multi-rail configuration. We’ve talked to several people about this issue and it was unclear if there was a hardware change and that is still being looked into. The bad news is that the firmware is not end-user upgradable. We have asked Corsair what if anything current customers can do since the firmware can’t be upgraded in the field. If you have an AXi series power supply we highly suggest downloading the Corsair Link software and programming the OCP setting.

Kingston Technology contacted us today and informed us that they will be lowering the voltages on the pre-production DDR4 memory kits that were sent out at 1.5V to 1.35V when they are shipped out to consumers. Kingston never shipped any DDR4 memory kits at 1.5V and won’t be. It doesn’t appear that the memory running at 1.5V had anything to do with our failure, but ASUS is still testing. We haven’t heard from ASUS in the past 48 hours and last we heard they were still looking into things in Taiwan now that our ‘old’ power supplies without OCP have arrived. ASUS said they will be giving us an official statement about the failure when the research is completed and we hope that will be sometime soon.

Update 9/17/2014 – Replacement ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard was delivered (11 days from point of failure to replacement board being delivered).

Update 9/18/2014 - Corsair has gotten back to us with some answers to some questions that we asked earlier this week. It turns out Corsair shipped AX760i/AX860i/AX1200i power supplies for about four months before they changed the firmware on them without notice. The firmware is not field upgradeable and Corsair will not be offering exchanges for anyone with an ‘older’ model that wants to swap out a PSU for one with the latest firmware on it. Corsair also said that by the motherboard makers [ASUS] own admission, the X99 Deluxe motherboard was the root cause for the failures.  Corsair also said this which we will directly quote: “Would an OCP-defaulted AXi or a competitor OCP-enabled PSU have save the CPU? We’re skeptical, but maybe.” So, right now it looks like the board had a failure and then when the system was restarted the PSU without OCP may or may not have taken out the CPU through the boards failed VR circuit. We are still waiting on ASUS to give us an official statement as to what happened to the board and were told that a typhoon in the region this week has slowed things down. In the meantime here are some answers to a Q&A that we gave Corsair that you can take a look at.

- When did Corsair change the firmware on the AXi series of power supplies?

AX760i/860i implementation date 3/15/2013  Lot#:13119560

AX1200i implementation date 3/8/2013 Lot# Lot#:13099520

Corsair shipped the AX760i/AX860i/AX1200i for about four months before they changed the firmware on them. If you bought one of these models when they first came out you likely have one with old firmware. The Corsair AX860i first was made available for sale with Amazon on November 1st, 2012, so just a heads up to early adopters.

- Can you please highlight what all changes with the new firmware?

PSU set to multi-rail (which by definition is OCP).

- So, you went from a default configuration of one +12V rail with no OCP to a virtual multi-rail setup with OCP enabled by default?

Yes.

- Why was this change not made public?

We saw no need for an announcement. The PSU design and its features stayed the same and this isn’t a design fault.

- Can end users with the original PSU design update their firmware at home?

No.

ax860i-psu-label

- How can an end user know what firmware is on his/her PSU? (Can users identify by the serial number what PSU they have? )

By the serial number. The first four digits are the date code. The first two digits are the year and then the next two numbers are the week of the year that the power supply were produced. The image above shows a Corsair AX860i Power Supply with serial number 1249954 that was made the 49th week of 2012 and would be running the original firmware.

AX760i/860i implementation date 3/15/2013  – First Lot number was: 13119560

AX1200i implementation date 3/8/2013 – First Lot number was: 13099520

- If users cannot upgrade the firmware at home, can users exchange their PSU for a model with OCP enabled by default?

No.

- How many Amps does the OCP default to on the AXi series. I heard it is different for each PSU?

By default, 40A. This is configurable.

- I was told that Intel Haswell-E processors are using up to 47A when overclocked to 4.4GHz and that it exceeds the OCP on some PSUs. Some motherboard makers are telling us to stay away from certain PSU’s. What are your thoughts on this?

When you have a PSU with multiple +12V rails, OCP can easily trip if the CPU is overclocked and running over load.  This is why Corsair PSUs with Link Digital allow the user to disable OCP and why all other Corsair PSUs feature a single +12V rail.

- ASUS designed the VR circuit on their X99 platform with 60A components. Corsair came out with the AXi series in 2012 with an adjustable OCP that was off by default. Was Corsair foreseeing a situation in the future where end users could customize the OCP setting depending on what motherboard they were using?

Initially, Corsair was simply following our existing trend of providing power supplies with a single +12V rail.   Since OCP is most beneficial during the initial build stage of putting together a PC, it made sense for the PSU to have the OCP on by default and therefore we decided to make the change.

Update 9/22/2014 -  ASUS informed Legit Reviews that they will need 2-5 more days before releasing an official statement on the failure.

Update 10/01/2014 -  ASUS is needing more time to discuss what they have found out with Corsair before making a public statement. We have been told that it will be another day or two until they will be able to say something. It sounds like some issues have been found during testing and the results are being looked into by both companies.

ax860i

Update 10/6/2014 - The two replacement Corsair AX860i power supplies were just received today, which just happens to be one month to the day from the platform failure.  ASUS informed us this morning that Corsair is requesting more information on their test setup and that needed more time again. We are hopeful we’ll get an answer soon, but it appears that ASUS and Corsair are having issues with what the test data relates to with the failure. It sounds like multiple things went wrong and of course no company wants to take more blame than they have to.

Update 10/9/2014 - Just received word from ASUS that the Corsair engineering group received the additional information that they wanted about the testing ASUS did and now ASUS is waiting to hear back. If ASUS gets an answer tomorrow they are hopeful that they will be able to provide a detailed response on the failure or failures that they believed happened to out platform on Monday (10-13-2009).

Update 10/13/2014 - We talked with ASUS and Corsair over the past several days and there was mention of needing a few more weeks to figure things out. It appears that Corsair is disagreeing with the ASUS findings about the power supply we were using and the testing of it at ASUS HQ. Legit Reviews has been kept in the dark for the past several weeks and can’t really do anything other than wait. Right now it appears that something might have been off with our power supply. Corsair gave us the Chroma test reports from their testing, but we have not been given anything by ASUS. We don’t know what was seen in the latest round of testing, but we do know that ASUS tested the PSU on a system and not just a PSU test machine. What did they find out that Corsair disagrees with? It feels like some people are trying to drag this out and hope it blows over. Is it working? We are still seeking answers from both ASUS and Corsair.

Update 10/22/2014 - No update from ASUS USA or Taiwan, but we did find out that someone at ASUS Singapore posted up a comment at Hardwarezone about our failure. ASUS@SG stated that our board failed due to a faulty pre-production BIOS/UEFI. They claim that the bug was discovered by Intel and the fix was done by ASUS before the first official UEFI release.  Now Intel is being blamed? The same ASUS eCustomer Service Center employee then followed that post up with a post stating that Intel could have had a bad batch of Intel Haswell-E processors. Very interesting. Legit Reviews still is still waiting on our official answer from Taiwan.  It is disappointing to see possible answers to our issues on other sites as ASUS hasn’t said anything about a bad BIOS/UEFI to us since this whole ordeal began.

asus-fault

Update 10/22/2014 Part 2 - ASUS USA told us they aren’t sure why ASUS@SG would post such comments and told us that is not the primary reason for our board failure. They didn’t deny having a UEFI/BIOS bug though, so this is starting to get interesting. Could we be getting close to finding out why our ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard failed? Hopefully ASUS will give us something since they have representatives telling people what happened on forums, but then the ASUS employees we are working with are telling us that is not the truth. Ugh!

Update 10/23/2014 - ASUS released UEFI 1004 for the ASUS X99 Deluxe today and we have been told that this update includes an EC (Embedded Controller) Firmware update that fixes something discovered by our board failing here at Legit Reviews. We don’t have the official response from ASUS yet, but Legit Reviews highly suggests that all ASUS X99 Deluxe owners update to UEFI build 1004 due to the fixes implemented in it for the way the board power is being handled. The build date on this UEFI is 10/16/2014, so it has been around for a week before it was made public. ASUS also reprogramed the memory tables after receiving new microcode from Intel. That made a world of a difference on our board when running memory kits beyond 3000MHz with 1T Command Rates. Here is a list of the key changes:

ASUS X99-DELUXE BIOS 1004 Change Log:
1. Update EC FW
2. Fix crash free issue
3. Fix Xonar card compatibility issue
4. Revise Thunderbolt memory resource
5. Enhance Xeon CPU compatibility
6. Rebuild SteamOS boot option

We have been told to expect the final answer on our failure from ASUS on Friday.

bios-1004

 

Update 10/24/2014 - Legit Reviews was just sent the failure analysis response on our ASUS X99-Deluxe Motherboard.  You can read it in its entirety below:

Hi Nate,

We have determined the primary cause of failure for the pre-production ASUS X99 Deluxe you were testing on September 6, 2014 along with a secondary cause gathered during the investigation phase. Our initial analysis of the VRM Phase-4 MOSFET/Driver package failure is a bad solder point that was also present at the VRM Phase-3 location resulting in the failure you described along with the presence of solder balls.  Additional analyses lead us to believe this was the secondary cause for the failure described.

After extensive testing and collaboration with leading power supply manufacturers and our VRM supplier (International Rectifier) it was determined that the new VRM design on the X99 Deluxe board needs a firmware update to balance start-up and shutdown power loads and sequencing across the MOSFET/Driver packages.   We determined that higher loads were placed on the VRM Phase-4 package when the processor was drawing less than 70 amps of current during start-up and shutdown sequences based on the original firmware.  This along with some older power supply OCP/Shutdown anomalies results in a bad component combination that randomly (very) leads to a VCCIN spike and power surge on the VRM Phase-4 MOSFET/Driver package that could cause component failures.  We still have not replicated this failure in our test labs after thousands of hours of testing across a significant number of component combinations. However, we believe this was the primary cause for the initial board shutdown and the solder point issues exacerbated the subsequent component failures in the manner you outlined when using the secondary power supply.  The good news is that we have a solution to this potential issue.

We are releasing a new EFI (build 1004) today that addresses this issue by balancing start-up and shutdown power loads across all VRM Phases when the processor is drawing less than 50 amps.  This will greatly mitigate the chance of a VCCIN spike or power surge in rare instances based on extensive testing.   Our new balancing/sequencing rules will decrease overall power efficiency results by a few percent based on processor loading under 50 amps but otherwise the board’s overall performance will not change.  In addition to the new power rules, EFI release 1004 features a host of performance improvements with significant improvements in the area of memory overclocking using the 100 strap at speeds up to and past DDR4-3300.

We highly recommend that all users of the ASUS X99 Deluxe board download and install EFI 1004.  This EFI is available from our support site starting today - X99-Deluxe EFI 1004. Please follow the proper instructions for updating your EFI.  The update guidelines are available at ASUS USB BIOS Flashback Guide or follow the instructions in the user manual when utilizing USB BIOS Flashback or EZ Flash 2.

ASUS is firmly committed to supporting our class leading X99 Deluxe motherboard that features unmatched performance and options like our patent-pending OC Socket, 5-way Optimization for one click overclocking and fan control, 3×3 802.11ac, Fan Expert 3 and Crystal Sound 2.

Sincerely,
ASUS

When our ASUS X99-Deluxe motherboard failed back in September during a system restart things just didn’t add up. We’ve spent tens of thousands of hours testing hardware components over the past 12 years and we posted up our findings in the event that others in the enthusiast community might have similar issues. When this post went online it got mixed feedback from many in the community. ASUS asking us to take it down until the cause was figured out was expected, but we were shocked that other hardware reviewers in the article posted negative comments (still shown below) about how we were doing ASUS an injustice. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only people in the world to have an ASUS X99-Deluxe motherboard fail and almost all the failures reported online were by folks that also were using Corsair AX/AXi power supplies. Something was obviously going wrong with that combination and no one could figure out what was causing the failures at first.

ASUS went out and bought Corsair AX860i power supplies to try to replicate our problem, but it was later discovered that the power supplies being sold today were different than the ones we were using. It turns out Corsair changed the firmware on their power supplies and the change was rather significant. The firmware changed the default configuration of the power supplies in this series from one +12V rail with no OCP to a virtual multi-rail setup with OCP enabled by default. This obviously didn’t cause the board to fail, the bad solder point was, but it could have contributed to the processor blowing up after the solder failure as OCP wasn’t enabled on our PSU.

Our failure caused ASUS to gather power supply manufacturers and their VRM supplier (Iternational Rectifier) and they looked at the new VRM design on the X99 Deluxe motherboard for weeks. They went through the design from top to bottom and figured out that they did indeed need to balance start-up sequences as the loads weren’t even. Guess what VRM Phase has the highest load? Yes, the one that failed on our board during a shut-down/start-up sequence. It appears that our Corsair AX860i power supply was one of the power supplies that had these anomalies and between the PSU design and the original VRM balancing/sequencing on the ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard were just right to cause the failure we saw in the field. ASUS has released UEFI 1004 that changed the way the balancing/sequencing is done on the ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard. They believe this will prevent any failure from happening to others and we are excited and happy that ASUS was able to come up with a fix. ASUS has proven that they will go the distance to make sure that their boards are stable. We are also glad that we published this article. We learned a great deal by doing so and it brought a situation to light that might not have been otherwise.

To summarize:

  1. ASUS X99-Deluxe Motherboard owners should immediately update to UEFI 1004. (No other ASUS Intel X99 board is impacted since the ASUS X99 Deluxe had a unique VRM design and firmware setup)
  2. Corsair AXi Power Supply Users Should Use OC Link Software to enable OCP on their PSU if it was made before March 15th, 2013.
  3. The ASUS X99-Deluxe Motherboard is safe to buy. We got another ASUS X99-Deluxe board up and running the day this one failed and it has not failed. We had some DDR4 stability issues with memory kits running 3200MHz, but ASUS fixed that with new memory tables in UEFI 1004. This board is one of the most thoroughly looked at Intel X99 boards on the market today and that should bring comfort to many. We know many of our readers were waiting on this situation to end before buying a $392 board and we don’t blame you.

This concludes our ongoing coverage of our ASUS X99 Deluxe motherboard failure. We’d like to thank our readers that stood up behind us on day one and laugh at those that lashed out for posting this article.  Legit Reviews was created to bring the truth out and to make the enthusiast community better. This article is an example of what drives Legit Reviews and we hope our readers appreciate our vision. Also we’d like to thank the many companies that were involved in solving this issue.  You could have left us in the dark, but you didn’t. You trusted our information and spent time and money to come up with a solution to the issue. You don’t get support or trust like that with all companies, but ASUS, Corsair and Intel are industry leaders for a reason.

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  • https://phoneyvirus.wordpress.com/ PhoneyVirus

    Long story shot, this why I’ll never purchase another ASUS or Corsair Product again, especially after this years dream machine. Install Corsair Link you gotta be kidding me right, useless along with ASUS Software bundle and a complete nightmare if you ask me, if you like checkout the post/article I wrote about this years dream machine on my blog, it’s annoying dealing with such issues.

    PhoneyVirus
    https://twitter.com/PhoneyVirus
    https://phoneyvirus.wordpress.com/

  • sblantipodi

    My Asus X99 Deluxe is full of bugs when running on a 5930K. It seems that this motherboard has been tested with 5960X only. My uncore is locked at 3GHz if I use 125strap, no matter what I insert in the CPU Cache Ratio of the bios. This is a huge bug since it locks the cache to 3GHz.

  • Nicholas Perry

    Fantastic to see ASUS really own up to something that needed to be changed.
    They continue to impress me.

  • Gear head

    Yes I Agree both Asus and Corsair need to replace all products destroyed by there unstable products. ( Might I suggest a small claims law suite if they don’t. ) Now its mainly Corsair that look like a bunch of idiots trying to hide. I’ll buy Seasonic instead for my next PSU.

    • solomonshv

      FYI, some of Corsair’s PSUs are made by Seasonic. the AXi line of PSUs (like the one that blew up in this reviews) are made by an OEM called flextronix who aren’t very good. But you are right to avoid avoid Corsair PSus. the problem with Corsair is they customize their PSUs too much while their engineers obviously lack experience in this area.

      Other good brands of PSU you can buy is Super Flower or Delta. Delta PSUs are not very common in the consumer market like they used to be but you can easily score a beastly Super Flower PSU in the US that are sold under the EVGA and Rosewill brands (some models).

  • 1wayjonny

    Great follow up and conclusion.

    Asus you forgot to mention the courtesy for the less then 10 people with blown-up X cpus that cost a $1,000 bucks. You should be working with intel to find a way to replace this for users. Its just not right.

    Yes the corsair had OCP turned on but they didn’t step up because the motherboard VCCIN should have only asked for the correct load.

    The larger load also explains why this only happens to the X processors and not the K processors, the over clock on the X process might have asked for more power.

    I am huge Asus fan but you really need to eat the $10K in hardware and turn this into a further success story.

    The best thing you can do is own the issue (which you already have in great way) and repair the damage done by the issue in this case the CPU (which you have not even mentioned).

    I will continue to both use Asus and Corsair but Asus you will piss off many if you do not do the right thing. If this was my processor I would be on the phone right now with your team.

    If you actually take care of this in proper matter you will have publicity and look like a stand up company.

    I am not a huge Apple fan but I will say they always handle stuff like this really well. You are the Apple of motherboards so its time to act like it.

    Thanks LegitReview, I do agree this was risky to post but you have potentially helped Asus, the VRM supplier prevent a tons of more broken boards. You have also put Corsair on check about their decision to turn OCP on and made people aware and we all have learned.

    Not one company liked what you did but this is bitter sweet because everybody is now smarter.

  • Will Ovtuth

    Wow!! Talk about a “hot potatoe”!!! None of these companies want to touch this situation….not a good sign. Def sounds like it was a combination of things at the right place at the right time doing precisely the right thing to have a failure like this.

  • Silent_Scone

    That reps statement falls in line from what I heard nearer the time from certain e-tailers having issues…. E-tailers are less likely to make public statements about failures but I heard there was an issue with the IMC communicating with BIOS on the earlier release build…Allegedly Intel responded saying it was a BIOS issue. I am unsure of what board this was regarding at the time, but it rings true here.

  • PCJunkieXL

    Well, it seems you guys are getting the run-around. I don’t know why Asus seems to be so afraid as to why their board failed.

    It failed, big deal. This stuff happens from time to time. It was probably a combination of the PSU not having it’s protection circuitry on by default (way to go Corsair). A possible bug issue in the BIOS itself… which wasn’t explained as to HOW that BIOS bug could of caused the motherboard to burn up?

    So, I’m just taking a guess here, maybe the bug had something to do with the voltage going to the CPU, so it randomly jumped voltage up, causing a spike in amp draw, whilst the PSU didn’t catch it because this wasn’t enabled manually, and then the VRM goes bye bye!

    After that I’m guessing the other protection circuits in the PSU detected something bad and shut themselves down.

    It is interesting though, and I for one would like to know the official reason before I clunked down 300+ on a motherboard that possibly has some kind of fatal flaw in it.

  • DazMode

    Those delays looks really creepy. Will try ASRock X99 this time for a change.

  • Kilger

    Well, I dont think Asus will step up for this, but if you go googleing “Asus x99 deluxe” you will see lots problem over there. and also other asus x99 mb too. and the only different between asus and other brand’s x99, is their new feature oc-socket.. I will prefer not to use oc-socket, until asus step up and explain.

    • Stilgars

      Pure genius, to introduce an unique feature that kills systems … Thank you Asus.

  • Stilgars

    Hello,

    I had an Asus X-99 deluxe, intel 5960x and Corsair AX1500i combo. Somehow, my system just went poof (q-code 00 at boot), after the PSU did a click at boot.

    I am RMAing both the mobo and CPU, do you ppl think I am safe with the AX1500i, probably the most expensive and high-end PSU available for general public?
    I did not use Corsair link software.

    • Damian Konrad

      reg “somehow” – did you enable the OCSocket and start overclocking?

      • Stilgars

        Not at all, I had weird issues when I built up my rig, probably b/c the Asus was not stable enough with the first BIOS version, and gave up o/c for the moment.
        I did nothing special when it happened.

    • Gear head

      Another one bites the dust !

      Another Asus deluxe / Corsair X99 combo goes dead with both companies still providing no explanation for this abysmally high product failure rate. Its become rather obvious that people cannot not trust either company at this point. At least not until one or both take full responsibility for these obvious hardware failures.

    • Stilgars

      If Corsair and/or Asus do not step up in the next days and clarify what happened to my system while I am RMAing half of it, I won’t get either of their two products.

  • Tasos

    After reading this I don’t feel like buying a corsair PSU, I’d rather go for a Seasonic Platinum series.

  • Dying_in_this_Crap_World

    Just shut up and find a 50 dollar x99 board for us common folk.

  • http://www.microsoft.com Damian Konrad

    What’s the probability this is Bios hotfix-able, so we can wait with enabling OCSocket and still buy the board? That’s all I needed to hear from ASUS.

  • Raghar de ishi

    This is comedy golden.

  • Buzzkill

    The X99 deluxe is the only X99 board that meets all of my feature requirements. So disappointed to see problems and a plethora of bad reviews. I planned to already have my new X99 build by now but given these problems and the problems I had with the Asus X58 Deluxe board it looks like I’m going to have to wait for several more months or even years.

    • solomonshv

      did you actually read those reviews? only 1 guy *thinks* he may have had the same issue but he didn’t actually test his CPU. and he was using also using a corsair AXi PSU (which by the way have 30% – 40% 1 or 2 star reviews). everyone else just makes references to this article.

      while there were 10 or so claims of DOA boards, that’s to be expected from the best selling X99 motherboard, one of the 3 models that were available on release day. but nobody actually said, “hey, this thing blew up my computer for certain”

      just don’t use a corsair PSU and you should be OK.

      • Buzzkill

        You may be right but given the cost of the board and CPU it makes me very hesitant to make a purchase. I am going to have to wait to see more feedback on the product.

  • Guest1

    “It feels like some people are trying to drag this out and hope it blows over.”

    well, not surprise with ASUS! just go check at newegg and tom’s hardware, or other pc forum, you will see lot asus x99 problem over there, and with different power supply. I will not say whos fault is it, but as least, asus should say something instand of hiding.

  • Jason Maxfield

    It would totally NOT surprise me that it was the fault of the PSU because of the current protection not being turned on by default.

    What kind of garbage is that by Corsair? At the very least, specify it in the manual! But, hey they reserve the right to change specs at any time without notifications…

    I’ve always thought that is a good way to jack the consumer, and in this case, it jacked up 1500 in hardware.

    I’m not so keen on Corsair at the moment… with particular emphasis on their power supplies. I built a new system for a friend of mine with their HX850 PSU. First unit, had high pitch squealing sounds before I even powered the system on. I immediately sent that back to newegg.

    Second unit, worked for 6 months, no notice of any kind of trouble, then one morning went BANG on my friends new rig! I was sure that it must of killed something in her rig. Turns out the surge went back into the surge protector and fried the socket on that.

    After placing a new PSU into her machine while dreading something might of died, it powered on as if nothing had happened. It’s been running fine for over 2 weeks now. Stress testing and using intel’s CPU checking program show no signs of issues at all.

    Oddly enough, the PSU barely had any signs of damage. Visually I could not see anything, and not wanting to void the warranty I left the case intact. I barely even smelled any electrical burning that would normally happen when a PSU blows.

    So, the 3rd unit should be arriving anytime today as I write this. Hopefully, 3rd time is the charm. As I’m very skeptical about Corsair PSU’s at the moment.

  • Gear head

    screw Corsair and Asus, I’m gonna get a new MBP or something stupid instead and skip X99 all together!
    If it was my CPU and mobo these guys blew up Id be not only slashing there tires but launching a $75 dollar small claims suit against them both for the 10K limit and no lawyer costs.

  • 1wayjonny

    10-13-2014

    I can not believe they said they need a few more weeks after the last update.

    There a multiple X99 problems on NewEgg and multiple people have lost $1400+ in hardware.

    Asus you must have some info about all the people on newegg with broken boards and CPU’s.

    • http://www.pugetsystems.com/bios.php?name=williamgeorge William M George

      Not an Asus apologist, though I will say I have several of their boards at home in my rigs. However, I just looked through all the 1- and 2-star reviews on Newegg for the X99 Deluxe and there are only *two* reports of people having boards die and take other components with them. Both were using Corsair power supplies, I think the same one LegitReviews used:

      http://www.newegg.com/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?ReviewID=4130837

      http://www.newegg.com/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?ReviewID=4146075

      Now I know Corsair is popular, but if there are multiple reports of the same board and PSU combo failing… that seems just as likely (maybe moreso) to be the power supply rather than the MB.

      Also, where I work we use the X99 Deluxe and have not yet had any failures. We have been running into some odd issues with them and Samsung M.2 SSDs, but that appears to be a firmware or BIOS issue not a failure of the boards.

      So with that said, lets wait and see what happens. I still have good confidence in Asus myself, and it sounds like Corsair dragging their feet at this point.

      [edited for spelling and grammar]

      • Nathan Kirsch

        I haven’t had any failures on the replacement board as well. It could have been something off or wrong with my ‘early’ AX860i with the older firmware. It’s a waiting game for sure at this point. I just hope they announce the truth after all this.

        • 1wayjonny

          What is going to be painful is I bet not Corsair or Asus will step up and replace the fried chips.

          If this happened to my $1K CPU with no replacement I would be driving to corporate HQ’s and start slashing tires on the cars.

          It is also weird its only been the 5960X, I have not seen one report with the 5930K, which I am using my self.

      • 1wayjonny

        I do agree with you and I only run Asus at home and I have 5x i7 machines.

        My first X99 Deluxe had the memory slot separated from the board. The second one was having black screen reboot issues.

        My third one was OK but returned at day 30 of my policy because of this posting.

        I did read the NewEGG review and most are non-sense postings or double posting from the same people. I even saw another bad post with different details helping drive the score down.

        I only saw two real postings in the one star section and third blowup in the TWO star section.

        Its scary and no-one is taking responsibility, I had to get a 4th board from a different retailer to hold me over for another 30 days and I have $4K in equipment that is not just going to sit here.

        The 4th board is OK but the head sinks and covers are scratched as hell and chipped, even if I keep this one I have to exchange it for a 5th one as I am not keeping this as a final.

        I am huge Asus fan and the quality on the board is great but damned if this doesn’t seem rushed and have bad quality control.

  • fkwl

    10-13-2009?
    Wow time files! lol

  • http://www.microsoft.com Damian Konrad

    Issues with ASUS flagship mobo pop up in the top Google results. It’s 8 days now since they requested another “day or two” – these delays are doing them more damage than admiting an issue and announcing revisions.

    • solomonshv

      you must not know how google works. they pop up in YOUR top google results because that’s what you have been searching around for.

  • 1wayjonny

    After the information on this comes clean, I would hope that if an Asus issue they would announce which of the X99 board this issue effects.

    I would find it hard to believe that this is only a X99 Deluxe problem.

    I just returned my second X99 Deluxe and have a gaming rig with no back bone as my 30 days were up at Microcenter. At least I got my money back, I just need to find a board.

    I am looking X99-E WS or going back to deluxe, red is not my thing.

    Come on Asus this is taking way too long.

  • Gear head

    Over one month and still no answer?!

    I for one will be either purchasing a competitors product going forward or skipping X99 now. It is disheartening how both Asus and Corsair are behaving with regard to this matter. Not only have they managed to scare myself away from a planned X99 purchase but im sure many thousands of other potential customers as well.

    I can only assume Asus is not responding because so many of there x99 boards are failing that they are swamped by the returns at this very moment. As I mentioned earlier in this thread according to Newegg reviews, over 50% of the boards appear bad according to confirmed owner reviews and almost every review is followed by an Asus apology from ” Lou” in response. Of course Lou has never responded to my queries. The liabilty costs associated with resulting damage from a bad design or part cold be rather high for Asus and Corsair has there own troubles as they are liable for changing the single / multi rail and advertising a different setup to purchasers.

    As an after thought, I wonder if SATA express connectors / hype drive will ever come out or was that just another scam? Heck, they been putting these ports on mobos since Z97 and still nothing, nada, zip?! Nothing much has improved since I purchased my first PCIe SSDs way back in 2009 ! Where’s all the darn progress?

    • solomonshv

      it looks like you didn’t actually read the reviews on newegg. while some people did get faulty Asus X99 boards, i can assure you that other brands such as gigabyte have shipped just as much if not more DOA boards. most of those newegg reviews are idiots talking about this article over and over. same thing goes for the reviews of the EVGA GTX 970 cards. 1 or 2 people got DOA cards but most of the reviews are bitching about the cooler design after reading articles about that.

      i went through 3 faulty Gigabyte X99 gaming G1 boards until i finally gave up on gigabyte and got an Asus X99 Deluxe board instead. it’s been working great for me and for my brother so far. both of use are using Super Flower PSUs and 5930k CPUs.

      as for this article, i’m willing to bet good money that this is Corsair’s fault. over the last 2 years or so, every corsair product i bought has been defective and had to be RMAd at least 1 time. my H110 cooler came with a broken pump, my obsidian 750D case came with broken USB 3 ports. bought 4 sets of vengeance RAM. one set wouldn’t even post the others gave random BSOD. i had two corsair CS450 Gold PSUs that i used as replacements in Dell machines, both died within 2 months. the list goes on.

      • Gear head

        I have indeed read every review but It looks like you didn’t. Also if you read this thread you would have realized we are talking specifically about the Asus x99 deluxe board.

        Gigabyte, never used them and Corsair I wouldn’t use or reccomend them either. If fact most manufactures have become incompetent and complacent these days and I trust few to deliver a proper product in good faith.

    • Raghar

      Scientific work needs at least one year of unpaid work, and results need to be delivered to politburo in triplicate.

      Failure of doing it in triplicate can result in half year in jail. Receiving money for doing scientific work, when the person could do proper honest menial work, and the scientific work could be done in his spare time/overtime as an example of his fervor, could be punished by 5 year of forced labor. Or transfer into scientific camp to Siberia, where he wouldn’t need to be paid because food and clothes would be provided on site.

      Socialistic scientific system was very efficient when money and time spend were taken into consideration.

      I guess Asus should educate themselves from masters.

      • solomonshv

        waaaaat?

  • Mario

    Reading some posts on a burned x99 deluxe and some other issues with x99 mobo’s, I became a bit scary, but I decided to put it all together and start it up.
    I took the risk and could not wait any longer. All the stuff I ordered was just sitting there. So, the Asus x99 de luxe mobo, Intel i7-5960X 3,0 GHz, 2 G.Skill 32 GB DDR4-2400 Kits, Corsair AX 1200i, NZXT H630, Asus GTX780TI-DC2OC-3GD5, NZXT Kraken X60 and some small stuff like extra fans, blu ray and SD cards reader.

    For the disk setup I went for two Samsung XP941 512GB M.2 NGFF PCIe x4 SSD’s (one OS and one software), a Revodrive 350 480 GB (scratch) and a Revodrive 350 960 GB (photo disk) and 4 Samsung EVO 1 TB SSD’s (two striped sets for video) and 3 WD 6 TB disks (mirrored backup disks).

    Encountered some issues. Had to find and buy a internal header expansion card for USB 2.0. The x99 mobo has only two USB 2.0 headers and I needed 4 of those headers. Found an extension card from NZXT for that. Several tries for the M.2 SSD as an OS disk (formatted it to fast, and it had to be a GPT boot disk, no issues after that). Could not get the Revodrive 480 to work as an OS disk and found no way of loading the driver first, so Win 8.1 did not see that drive when installing. So went for the M.2 then as OS disk.

    That’s was last week, and still no issues at all (yet). It is pretty dammed fast and it all runs super smooth and so fast, unbelievable how Premiere Pro, Photoshop and (a bit less as it is not well written for multi core) Lightroom are running.

    But…… it is annoying tht there still is an amount of uncertainty…… upgraded the Bios to the latest version, as I read it solved some issues.

    • Mario

      Hmmm, reading the last post I am starting to think that perhaps it could be a wise thing (to be safe) to replace my Corsair PSU……

  • Concerned

    Wow this is getting ridiculous… over a month ago and still no answer, meanwhile already 2 more reports of these boards burning on newegg… I think im just going to return my X99 Deluxe…

  • ItNeverEnds

    Asus has been promoting the x99 Deluxe as a workstation board for video editing, while the x99 E WS goes entirely unmentioned, though supposedly released at the same time. Nathan do you have any idea at all, or an educated hunch, or even a blind stab-in-the-dark guess, as to when if ever this thing will come out? — and how long after that it would be ready for prime time? No (real) answer from Asus email address.

  • http://www.microsoft.com Damian Konrad

    “(…) We have been told that it will be another day or two until they will be able to say something. (…) the results are being looked into by both companies. ”

    In other words, Asus needs another week to design and roll out their PR damage control, and split the blame with Corsair, so the OC socket can survive.

    • rte

      Gigabyte X99 LN2 also has a OC socket.

  • Gear head

    Asus X-99 deluxe motherboard has an over 50% failure rate.

    As of today on the Newegg site there are 37 confirmed owner reviews for the X-99 deluxe and more than half have fried, died or arrived DOA. The unavaiable Asus x-99 E WS has 3 owner reviews and 2 out of 3 have died.

    If Asus was a doctor they’d be carged with mass murder by now. Over half of the motherboards are failing, geeze that’s a bloody disaster. I’m to scared to buy an Asus Mobo now!

    • http://www.pugetsystems.com/bios.php?name=williamgeorge William M George

      For what it is worth, I work at a system builder and we use the Asus X99 Deluxe. So far 40 systems built with it, no failures at all.

      At the moment, we don’t use any Corsair power supplies – and we also don’t use memory clocked higher than Intel’s spec for the X99 chipset and accompanying CPUs (DDR4 2133MHz). We have overclocked CPUs on that board, though, without issue.

      • Gear head

        Very good to hear of your positive experience so far, surprisingly yours is the total opposite of Newegg builders and most of them claim they were also stock when things went south.

        Not sure why the difference but I find it more scary that results could be so contradictive rather than consistent either way.

        • http://www.pugetsystems.com/bios.php?name=williamgeorge William M George

          Yeah, I am interested by the discrepancy between our experience and those of individuals and review sites like this one. I have been following this article and its comments since it was first published, and am quite curious to see what Asus and Corsair end up putting forth as their conclusion. Have you seen any common threads on the Newegg failure reports? A specific brand of PSU, memory, or anything?

        • solomonshv

          of all the supposed failures the above clown “gear head” is talking about, only like 5 people actually said that their board had failed, but it wasn’t a total blow out where everything died. most of the people giving 1 or 2 egg reviews are just quoting this write up.

          i built 5 system with an asus x99 deluxe, all running EVGA (Super Flower) PSUs. all 5 have been running for a month and half and none of them have blown up yet.

    • http://www.microsoft.com Damian Konrad

      any failures with 5930K (i.e. anything less powerhungry than the top of the line X5960 ?) please paste a link

      • hdhdj

        They all have the same tdp.

        • solomonshv

          while TDP is the same they don’t actually use the same amount of power. the 5960x uses about 25% more power than the 5930k. and the 5930k doesn’t use anywhere near 140W, which is its TDP. mine is overclocked by 30% and still pulls under 90W at full load.

    • solomonshv

      i built 4 workstations and 1 gaming rig with the asus x99 deluxe. all of them use EVGA (Super Flower) PSUs and G.Skill 2800MHz and 3000MHz memory. they were built between august 30th and september 5th. none of them have died.

      most of the people writing bad reviews did NOT actually get a board that failed. they all are just referencing this write up. they are all idiots like you

      • Gear head

        Hey Solomonshv, suck my you know what !

        • solomonshv

          i would, but then you’d be unemployed.

  • jlt

    I think asus vrm got confused when it always though corsair psu was single rail but them new ones are multi-rail so it went alg alg alg before going up in smoke. just like Arnie* in Stolen Identity 3. :P
    *not the real Arnold
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az5ZPk-bpeU

  • Fanatoli Guyoff

    Sounds more like the solder balls were probably the reason for the failure and not the result of it…but that’s just a thought.

  • Mario

    Hmmm, this goes the way of a power feed issue in the design of the mobo but not only on the Asus side. Chipset design issue?

  • Gear head

    Just a guess here but If this was some other manufactures fault Asus would have announced it immediately. By taking far longer than promised to respond means they are likely to blame and need to think of a way out.

  • http://www.microsoft.com Damian Konrad

    I assume the 2-5 days was requested by the PR representative from Asus. 10 days looks very unprofessional, they better have a good excuse, because to me as a customer it only sends a bad signal. Right now hesitating between ASRock EVGA and ASUS. Why is there no complaints about ASRock and EVGA x99 yet? I’ve already got white tubes dammit ;)
    Another thing, correct me, failures only happened with X5690 + ASUS/MSI, right? This could mean we are safe with 5930K or another mobo (until Asus update).

  • Damian Konrad

    I assume the 2-5 days was requested by the PR representative from Asus. 10 days looks very unprofessional, they better have a good excuse, because to me as a customer it only sends a bad signal. Right now hesitating between ASRock EVGA and ASUS. Why is there no complaints about ASRock and EVGA x99 yet? I’ve already got white tubes dammit ;)

    • solomonshv

      EVGA boards have sucked since Z77 boards first came out. there are still tons of unresolved issues with their Z77, X79, Z87 and Z97 boards.

      their graphic cards are for the most part excellent. one thing i don’t understand however is why EVGA insists on making 10+ versions of each high end card when 7 or 8 of the those versions are the same exact thing.

  • Mario

    Just installed it. Bios update 904 is what it is actually. Only EZ Update tells it is 1.0.0.0.

  • lw

    There is a new bios version 1.0.0.0 on asus ez update program, but the site itself does not list it. Hmmm….

    Still no news?

  • Gear head

    It is October now.

    Asus, how’s the ” silent” x99 Mobo recall going?

  • sfke

    It’s almost October, any update from Asus yet?

  • Gear head

    Asus its been 8 days? Wheres your response? you
    asked for 2-5 days , come on already!

  • Raghar

    What’s new?

    • Nathan Kirsch

      ASUS should deliver the final response tomorrow if all goes as planned. The replacement Corsair PSU’s aren’t here yet, so still waiting on those. That is all really.

  • swing84

    “On Intel Haswell-E processors all five internal power rails are pulled from the single VCCIN” – Thank you Intel.
    As to the ASUS motherboard, I will not be purchasing that puppy. I stopped building computers with ASUS motherboards since the late 1990s, when quality went down. Your picture indicates a quality control problem on the motherboard.

  • swing84

    What the hell is “virtual multi-rail”? Virtual = almost, but in computers it means something else. Is “virtual multi-rail” simply a single rail with separate rails tied to it?
    Thank you for NOT explaining.

    • Nathan Kirsch

      From Corsair: “Multiple +12V rails on 99% of the PSUs out there are often considered “virtual” because there isn’t actually multiple, physical +12V rails. You usually have one +12V rail and then that +12V rail is split up into several different circuits, each with an OCP on it. So the term “multiple +12V rails” is actually a misnomer because literally what you have is “a
      split +12V rail”. Therefore, people often use the term “virtual”.

      If a PSU had actual multiple +12V rails, there would be multiple +12V outputs. That’s simply not the case in most of the units out there.

      The rare exception is some older, high capacity PSUs. But for the sake of better efficiency, this simply isn’t done anymore.”

  • Raghar

    Is there any news on X99-E WS?

  • cm

    More than 2 week, asus without any update yet?

    • Nathan Kirsch

      ASUS has asked for 3-5 more days for testing before making a final statement. It sounds like they are looking at solder points and traces right now.

  • michele

    i7-5960x is thirsty for power, asus underestimated the power?
    an example asrock boards have to support a power 1300w!!!

  • michele

    Asrock 16phase VRM. Good for x99!!

  • Jonathan

    This exact same scenario happened to me yesterday. Wish I had read this before going in to the bios. This was my one spending spree on a machine of dreams and I don’t know what to do now. My power supply was Seasonic 1050X platinum, so it’s not because of the power supply, I think.

    I’m so pissed and sad.

    • Jonathan

      To clearify, I bought another asus x99 deluxe and got the 00 error code. Now I guess I’ll start doing my renderings on my old i870 until I can get a swap on the processor or put in on insurence or something. Good times.

      • justin

        I too had my x99 deluxe fry my 5960x, only a month of use.

        • http://www.pugetsystems.com/bios.php?name=williamgeorge William M George

          Would you mind sharing what power supply you used? So far the only confirmed reports I have seen (here and a couple reviews on Newegg) were all using Corsair power supplies.

    • Raghar

      What do you mean going into BIOS? Did you do something in before explosion?

  • Wei Day

    my S/N is 1237. am i safe on my AX1200i?

  • Raghar

    Well 12V/90A, or 12V/40 A for a normal single rail PSU isn’t that big difference. Flames are bit smaller, and that’s all.

    These metal balls are problem. When Asus went into ODM methodology, they lost some control over process. Also I wonder if boards are designed to be resilient to standard user damage, and common manufacturing related problems.

  • Cinder Elli

    Thank you for keeping us updated. I just got a private message from a fellow forum member on Overclock.net who had the same thing happen on the same motherboard. He mentions that he has heard there is a recall now on the motherboard, I have no idea where he ” heard ” this.

    • Nathan Kirsch

      I heard early on that ASUS was asking for boards back from reviewers, but there were also reports that other motherboard makers were offering to pay other sites to post this up as news (those were found to be false). ASUS has made no mention of a recall or an issue with their design to me as of this morning.

  • http://www.socialjustice.ws gerwingr

    rather stormy comments, i am leaning with Kuba Ober and the micro macro solder balls, arching over, after close thermal lowered the temp to metal migrate the ” blob” this happens over time, just good observable tech going on here, for me, thanks.

    • Nathan Kirsch

      yeah, it happens with some folks. There is some good findings here and I have learned much from this post. It has also uncovered some things that were previously unknown, helped play a part in a company changing the voltage on their memory kits and more.

  • davidber

    @nathankirsch:disqus Awesome updates to this. Reading the updates, it might technically be a power supply that caused this, but in the end we will have to see a new motherboard rev. Getting people to change or know the level of technical depth of their power supply is not going to happen. I do wonder though if this is something that Asus could actually solve in the BIOS though.

    And to let you know, your review did impact me and I did not buy the X99 deluxe. I bought the Rampage V instead :) Now I just need EKWB to hurry up with their full motherboard block.

  • Roy

    I think you meant a single rail might have exacerbated the damage. I suspect it was you who was exasperated….

  • Rey

    I have EXACTLY THIS!!

    I am on my second motherboard now …..and it instantly blew up

    • Nathan Kirsch

      pics?

  • Chiam Goldstein

    Around blacks, never relax.

  • http://facebook.com/AntDX316 Anthony Abelardo

    should make 1.5V not an option

    1.45V should be the absolute maximum for current power controllers

    in the future if they do implement bigger ones to sustain more power then 1.5 could be but as of now they shouldn’t

    would be bad that people later on who get it 2nd hand do 1.5V fry the board and have no RMA lol unless a bios update can pass through that 1.5V cannot be a possible selected option

    • Nathan Kirsch

      ^^ Kingston reduced all their kits that were at 1.5V to 1.35 this week!

  • DarkJoney

    Oh, god, this so bad. I will never back to ASUS, cuz my M5A99FX Pro R2.0 burned after FX 8320 4.5 ggh overclock, and it was unstable on 4.2. ASUS can’t do overclock :D With same CPU on Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 I reached stable 4.6….

    • James Baranski

      Azuz M5A99FX had VRM problems. This is not new news DarkJohnny…

      • DarkJoney

        Really? didn’t knew that.

  • Kuba Ober

    You’ve got it completely wrong with the solder balls. The balls weren’t there due to the thermal damage. They were the cause of it and were present on the board from the factory. Those balls are a common side effect of improper design-for-manufacturability (wrong paste mask openings in the stencil, etc.). The blow-up was most likely because a loose solder ball has contacted the pads of the mosfet and has likely vaporized.

    • Nathan Kirsch

      highly unlikely as the board was used for hundreds of hours of testing over the two week span leading up to this. The board wasn’t moved, so for a loose solder ball to move on its own and fry the board would be a bit of a stretch. Anything is possible though and ASUS and seen all the images and of the failure scenarios they have shared with me that is not one of them. The board has been packed up and sent back to ASUS along with the PSU that was on the system at the time of failure. ASUS will be hand carrying the PSU to Corsair to test it on the Chroma this week since I’ll be at IDF and unable to watch the testing as it will take a number of hours to run all the tests required.

      • Kuba Ober

        The solder ball was already there, likely in mechanical contact with the pads. The only thing separating it from from the pads was a thin coating of flux. As the voltages are very low, it doesn’t take very many layers of flux molecules to keep it at bay. Eventually the minute vibrations and thermal cycling has worn it off. Those balls have nothing better to do but to stick in tight spots such as between the heatsink and the PCB. They are mostly harmless everywhere else. The fact that other boards have supposedly failed in a similar fashion would indicate that there’s a consistent process issue at play.

      • swing84

        Kuba Ober is saying the only insulation [at the solder ball] was a thin coating of flux.
        I agree that motherboard inspections should take place, especially at known problem areas such as this one. And, the motherboard should be checked for a short[s], too bad you did not check for this – or have probes small enough to check before sending the motherboard back.

        • Nathan Kirsch

          ASUS has the VRM component maker looking at this board with them this week. We don’t have the abilities to look at boards failures in such detail and ASUS has called in all the forces.

  • George Daws

    It’s a shame this has happened. I guess, like NEW Cars, there is always going to be a teething problem. I hope it gets fixed soon or this NEW X99 series could end up like MS’s Vista. :)

    • David Calloway

      This is not a teething problem, especially on 1.5K of hardware. This is something that should have reared it’s ugly head during extensive QC. This type of thing worries me that the private sector has effectively become the QC department for so many OEM’s. BTW MS’s Vista was nothing more than a W7 beta. : )

  • James Baranski

    Really a stupid write. Reviewers know that shizza happens and making an ass hat post like this would lead readers to believe this is a bad Asus board. Many things can make a board go bad such as user(who knows here), PSU, perhaps there was a storm last night with a power surge, short,bad grounding, ect… Really bad taste to make an article on this. If I were JJ at Asus, I would be all over you for this….

    • Nathan Kirsch

      James – We already reviewed this board, processor, power supply and so on and recommended them all. Would it be right to just sweep it under the carpet and keep it all off the record. That happens so many times, but this is on all retail hardware. The site wouldn’t be called Legit Reviews if we couldn’t post what we wanted and the truth. If multiple sites had this issue and didn’t post it because ASUS asked them not to say anything who would that help? If there is an issue shouldn’t it be known? I never said who was to blame, just that we were looking into it. Also, ASUS was alerted before the article was published.

      • James Baranski

        It is dead wrong. A board can be simply “bumped” and a solder point can be damaged. Without scientific “proof” it is the boards fault, it is really asinine to write an article like this. If you have any background whatsoever, you should also know that power supplies go bad. Unless there is a pattern of many boards going bad, this is a non issue. I will say, your credibility is 0. I reviewed boards for years…

        Also, like mentioned, human beings are also involved in manufacturing the board. If a Mercedes 500 series has a bad alternator on a brand new car, do you see the Auto magazines making a specific post on that particular car. Nathan, as mentioned. Really stupid article. 1 bad board does NOT entail an article on this. You seriously need to get a clue.

        Just because you made the write does not make it appropriate. If you reviewed multiple board and had an issue, than yes. You cannot take an isolated issue and make a write like this. If I were JJ, I would ay GFY. Just saying….. No more boards for you..

        • davidber

          I would say your credibility is zero Mr. Baranski. If you look at where this occurred on the board, to say it even could be a ‘bump’ is so far fetched that the odds of winning the lottery two weeks in a row is better.

          Personally, I found the article to not have any bias and just explained what they saw and what they did. At no time did they bash Asus. At no time did they say they even had a conclusive answer as to why it occurred. You can read that they are not sure if it was memory related, power supply related, CHIPSET related or even motherboard related.

          For one, I appreciate the article. It has impacted me. I have purchased my 5960x and am debating between the X99 Deluxe and the Rampage V. This ultimately could be an issue with the chipset where all the MoBo makers are going to have to have another rev that fixes some issues. Considering I am typing this on system that has an Asus P8P67 board, and all the ‘revs’ that Asus had to do there, I would not be surprised if we had a rev B within a month.

          Now back to Legit and their writing . . . Honestly, this site was generally 3rd or 4th on my list for reviews. Because of this, it is now first. Honesty builds credibility. They have shown they are honest.

        • James Baranski

          My credibility 0? Humans make the board. Do you see magazines reporting Mercedes S500 when they have an alternator go bad? No. There is noway to tell what and how this board went bad. Pretty simple. Are you an electrical engineer or a motherboard developer? No you aren’t. If another was reviewed and the same issue occurs, then there is an issue….It could be a bios issue, handling issue, PSU issue like I explained earlier. If you knew about motherboards, this would NOT be a chipset issue and the Deluxe and Rampage X99 uses the same chipset…. Chipset is designed by Intel, not ASUS. There is no review website in the industry that writes a negative article when 1 board goes bad. Now if there is a trend yes……

        • Nathan Kirsch

          James, you are a motherboard reviewer for another PC hardware review site. Is your review up? Instead of coming over here and arguing with everyone and telling everyone what a crap article this is why don’t you just review this board yourself? Maybe you’ll confirm what I saw. That would a bigger help to the community that arguing about something that is already done.

        • James Baranski

          Actually, retired Nathan… I am not arguing, your writing is #1- incomplete. Writers do do leave articles open ended. If you could see, I am explaining to the community that 1 board is not a reason to write and article. The problem as I explained…. some readers can get a negative opinion about Asus or the X99 board in question when you have no proof of what caused the issue. REVIEW ANOTHER DAMN BOARD and complete the article. It is not fair to ASUS that you report this issue when you may have used excessive voltage. Perhaps you did, perhaps you did not. How many amp fuse are you working off of? How much do you have plugged into the circuit? I built a rig for a guy who had old electric in his home and a 15 amp circuit with too much plugged into that circuit resulting into blowing 2 boards. I am just coming up with some of many things that could cause fault. There is no professional reviewer, writer that would publish such nonsense without an explanation and you have none pal.

        • Nathan Kirsch

          I’m always hiring if you’d like to do something constructive with your free time.

        • Jonathan

          Just ban this guy. He totally ruined the comments section on this very informative and useful article. You never once blamed ASUS or Corsair or Intel but you shared your objective experience with this brand new chipset, socket, CPU, and RAM combination. This very well could be a faulty PSU, or mobo, or the DDR4 RAM voltage might have been unsafe. Or it could be indicative to a flaw in the chipset design under high loads and we could see similar cases popping up over the next few months as more and more people use the platform and push it. Remember the VRM issues with the 590 and boards going up in smoke? I was glad for review sites mentioning their experiences with that as were other readers and in this case, I am glad you mention this.

          So to summarize, there’s nothing wrong with this article because it could be a 1 off fault mobo/PSU failure (which does happen) but considering how many things are new and untested here, having your experience shared with us lets us think a little more objectively. Jumping onto the new tech bandwagon is always risky and this time it could be more so. This jerkwad with a massive stick up his butt hating on you is a blight to this site and, in my opinion at least, should be prevented from ruining legitimate discussions on the comments here. The comments are completely unreadable for 2/3′s of it because of him.

        • marsofearth

          Naw, disagreement is healthy for the open minded. The only person burning up is Mr. Baranski. At this rate he will be up in smoke in no time. he he ….

        • http://techgage.com/ Rob Williams

          Do you have a vendetta against LR or something? Yes, this article is open-ended – it has to be given the nature of the incident. You’re correct in that mishaps like this are not totally uncommon, but the fact of the matter is, the article linked to another website that had experienced the exact same kind of issue. That right there proves to me that this article has reason to exist. That incident didn’t even involve the same motherboard, and Nate was clear on that fact (and also the fact that he wasn’t pointing the finger at any company in particular).

          “BTW, when there is an issue, good writers do not leave the article open ended”

          Your solution is to hold off indefinitely, then? This is an issue that popped-up a mere week after launch, so holding-off isn’t what I’d consider to be a smart idea. With it out there in the open, these companies can get to figuring out what the issue was rather than shove it aside, because again, this wasn’t unique (taking Phoronix’s experience into consideration). If the article isn’t published, the companies involved could rinse and repeat their “it’s a fluke” message to Nate over and over, while the problem can potentially still exist. That’s not great when consumers will be dropping a significant amount of money on the basic components of this platform.

          “Actually, retired Nathan…”

          I’m sure every consumer who wishes for transparency will be glad of that.

        • James Baranski

          The solution is to get another board from Asus. If one faults, Asus will send a new one in days. Just pop it in and test it..

        • davidber

          You keep wanting to drag cars into the equation. The only thing that a car has to do with this is that I will get into one to go buy this equipment. It is a piss poor analogy. Stay on the subject matter at hand, an Asus motherboard.

          You do have zero credibility. You assume that I am to believe you are some know it all who has reviewed boards for decades and has a Q score high enough for me to know. Fortunately we are on the internet and the virtual world is large enough for your ego.

          At this point I am starting to believe you work for Asus or your reading comprehension is terrible.

          I suggest you re-read the article and point out where they blame Asus. When you find it, please highlight it.

          And yes this could be a chipset issue. Intel designed the chipset and set the reference. If you read the article you would notice that another board also had an issue.

          +1 for Legit and their unbiased review.
          -1 for Mr. I know everything

        • James Baranski

          It is on the matter… BTW, when there is an issue, good writers do not leave the article open ended. They write a complete article and until another board is tested, the article is not complete. Writers do not say” stay tuned”.. You could have your opinion of course but what is the difference from a microwave, automobile or motherboard that goes bad. If it is an isolated item no biggie. If it is a multiple product issue, there is a problem. I guess this is something you do not comprehend. Sorry about your thinking…..

        • Nathan Kirsch

          Another review site writer coming over to troll? Let’s just stop feeding him. His character assassination has failed.

        • Patrick Thomas Cabahug

          James Baranski, I guess you never heard about a consumer right to know. As for Nathan Kirsch writing this article, it is worth noting for everyone consider buying this board. Since it posted public like the other users commented they are likely make new revisions of the board. Which is a good thing. This site is called Legit Review. I suggest you look up what legit means.

        • BeaveVillage

          A simple Google Search reveals who James Baranski really is:

          http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Florida/Seminole-County-FL/James-Baranski.2601807.html

        • James Baranski

          Azz hat, look at my photo next to my name. Shows your IQ dumbass

        • Bill Stelling

          If you want to blog, go back to work.. It appears you read the title of the article, formed your opinion, and without reading it you started posting. Next time read the article.. It is really helpful and people won’t mistake you for a post troll for totally going off topic..
          The article is not about Asus, but one of their boards frying along with an Intel CPU – cause unknown..

        • BeaveVillage

          LOL. Was I right at least? :)

        • Angel

          um there are 1000 of people with his name… My name seems rare.. Im a guy named Angel Angelov.. but theres over 5000 people with my exact name just on facebook

      • James Baranski

        Asus can easily ship another board and if you have the same issue, then write the article…… Sheesh…. I have had isolated issues with boards form all manufacturers but seeing it could have been my fault, transportation, my own hardware… it DOES NOT ENTAIL negative publicity…… I do not and WILL not consider your site a “LEGIT” REVIEW SITE… AND NEITHER SHOULD THE READERS.

        • http://www.socialjustice.ws gerwingr

          that is a little harsh James. and Caps, does not give you dominance, we glen knowledge here by facts and sharing, not condemnation

      • marsofearth

        Thank you for writing your experience and findings. Sure one offs and accidents happen. I found no accusation of blame in the write up, and feel a lot of readers will be interested to find out what Intel’s, Asus’s explanation is.

        • http://www.socialjustice.ws gerwingr

          well said, i am following for analysis thoughts, personally, i am thinking solder balls, arched a contact,

      • Angel

        I believe its good that this was posted… this help Asus… because if many people post this problem then they can get clues to what the problem is by comparing things…If nobody said anything. then A serious problem might never be fixed… companies might hate bad reviews but in the long run it helps them

      • Ruud Niet

        I do not even want asus. msi or gigabyte in any of my systems at all EVER again.
        The same goes for the Corsair products they make crap and all of them have the worst support on the planet.
        You basically am screwed to buy anything form these D grade manufactors
        I have only bad experiences over the last 8 years with them, time to change to a proper company who is going to give their buyers support as it should.
        These companies are no longer worth buying from at all, especially because they only react if some magazine tester gets active.
        All my current boards have issues and non of them gave me support on the problems i am having.
        Failure to run memory 16/32 Gb memory sets at xmp profiles, usb ports failing and destroying devices.
        Too much to mention, so i am still searching for some manufactor who can replace these crap builders
        I send for instance gigabyte a motherboard which was acting weird and i told them there is something wrong with the northbridge, i had to send it to some address after several months it came back with the message NOTHING WRONG.
        So i asumed these guys should know what they are doing right…… Well WRONG they don’t the motherboard died 3 months later.
        And guess what i found when i took the cooler of the northbridge yes indeed a totally melted chip..
        The same happened with me on a msi gpu they screwed up on that also, yes it blew up they did not even want to talk with me.
        Had to get support from the shop which blamed me for probably have damaged it myself.
        Several weeks later everybody was seeing messages about blowing up parts on that nvidia cards…
        So i totally had it with these bad companies.

    • Isaac Kingsley

      He’s sharing his horror story, if he brushes it aside then nothing will be investigated and if it IS an issue, more people could have their hardware killed.

    • solomonshv

      no, YOU were probably mishandled and dropped on your empty head as a kid. this is not just a random occurrence. this has happened to many owners of this specific board already. write ups like this, and the write up about EVGA’s terrible GTX 970 cooling design, help the consumers make the RIGHT decision and keep the manufacturers on their toes.

  • arkon

    Sh***.the motherboard is still in beta? :D
    Its not good for asus.

    • James Baranski

      Wrong.There is no proof it’s the boards fault. This could be the users fault, bad PSU, bad ground, bad electric in the home.. Who knows..

      • arkon

        imo I guess its not user fault.its more about mobo fault.will see in time.
        and what if cpu vrm is too hot and crash instantly without a proper cooler?

        • Nathan Kirsch

          James, you can rule out bad electric on the test bench and unless I hit f10 and enter wrong you can rule out user error. You make it sound like we haven’t been testing hardware daily for 12+ years. This was posted as it was an unusual event. It wasn’t a story we even promoted, e-mailed out to our subscribers or anything like that. It was posted up mainly to see if others out there that have this platform are also having issues. If there are I hope they’ll post as we might better understand if there is a greater issue here with the PSU, 1.5V DDR4 kits, the motherboard or something else.

        • James Baranski

          THERE IS NO WAY TO PROVE IT IS THE BOARDS FAULT AT THIS TIME. Unless your a electronic engineer and can scientifically prove one of the components caused the issue……. You get the point…Your readers will get a bad impression on ASUS. You could have bumped the board and hit a solder joint. It could have happened though Fed Ex(Asus uses Fed Ex) Asus will gladly ship another board to you. If you have an issue with the second board, then there is a legit concern. As a reviewer, your should know, these things happen and your write can be misconstrued by readers that they make a bad product. You should know, every manufacturer has had issues like this so trying to prove your a “legit” review site by writing the article is terribly wrong…

        • .halt

          Someone is trying to PROVE that its a design flaw in the MB? How did I miss that?

        • Dave lister

          Get the stick out of your ass – reviewers that take the risk of angering suppliers by publishing faults are the only ones worth reading. Anyone with even half a brain wouldn’t hold off buying one of these boards after Asus / Intel comment on what caused the failure… If it’s a problem two reviewers have had so far, at this early stage….

        • K4te

          “Get the stick out of your ass – reviewers that take the risk of angering suppliers by publishing faults are the only ones worth reading.”

          Quoted for truth.

        • Patrick Thomas Cabahug

          I doubt you are retired freaking writer James Baranski because your simple lack of common courtesy yelling with CAPS. If you are indeed a retired writer you were probably force to retire because you can’t get along with people.

        • James Baranski

          If you tested hardware for 12 years, you should know better :)

        • Mysterio

          Quite the contrary, i think they knew better by posting this. I really wouldn’t want to spend over 1k dollars and find out that one of the components had a fault. Alerting the buyer to be aware of a potential issue, that’s the point of the article.

        • James Baranski

          Look, human beings make the board. Users handle it… A solder joint could have been damaged through handling, transportation. PSU’s have been known to fault, power surges, ect.. I guess means you are assuming and this is no representation of Asus, Gigabyte, MSI or whatever board manufacturer. Asus would gladly resent the site another board. To make a write on this issue is dead wrong. If the next board has the problem, then yes. A write would be in order. You do not see sites write a bad review on a Honda Accord if the alternator failed on the testing do ya? Sheesh guys..

        • Nathan Kirsch

          If a brand new car model blew up and caught on fire two weeks after being launched it would make the news. I recall an electric car maker that recently made news for certain fire situations. Thank goodness I live in America, started my own corporation and have freedom of speech. If I lived in some other country you’d likely have me stoned for posting about a factual event! This is why I started Legit Reviews… Because I didn’t believe everything that was being posted on others.

        • David Calloway

          Look, all the man was trying to do was raise awareness to an issue he had with one of the X99 MB’s. If this happens 1 in 10K then that’s fine of course. 1 in 10 then obviously there’s a problem. No blame was assigned. Period. Intel does design the chipsets, fabrication however is handled by the OEM’s. Human beings do handle and to a lesser extent make the boards, but not the solder points on the board. At this point I believe it is a safe assumption that anyone reading reviews for an X99 platform isn’t going to jump ship from their favorite MB OEM because of this review, but will take note and watch. Face it; we’re not Dell or HP people. As far as typos are concerned; your last paragraph should read,’ gladly resend the site… ‘. Yes James, if I were to go down into my garage and notice my ’13 SLK 55 needed a new alternator I wouldn’t think much of it…on the other hand if the alternator grounded out and melted one of my forward wiring harnesses I’d be f**king livid. Automobiles are a poor comparison to add into the mix. BTW most test sites have stable voltage supplies before the PSU….. power surge??? Oh brother…. UPS’s anyone???

        • Rob Ludwic

          I would like to add my two cents to this article. James my friend, Friday morning the 5th, I flashed the BIOS on my ASUS X99 Deluxe and I have done this many times throughout the years. The board had a 5930K in it and a 16 gig kit of GSkill DDR4 2666 Mhz Ripjaw RAM. My board did not smoke but it and most likely the CPU died. The board could not boot and during POST it hung at the CPU LED. This does not sound like an isolated incident with Nathan. He is just telling my story also. My parts are on the way back to Newegg. I paid $55 to expedite it so they can get my replacement parts back to me ASAP. Don’t hammer Nathan unless you hammer me. The only difference is I couldn’t afford spare boards and chips and my system didn’t smoke. The MB and most likely the CPU died. Isolated? I think not.

        • Rob Ludwic

          I would like to add my two cents to this article. James my friend, Friday morning the 5th, I flashed the BIOS on my ASUS X99 Deluxe and I have done this many times throughout the years. The board had a 5930K in it and a 16 gig kit of GSkill DDR4 2666 Mhz Ripjaw RAM. My board did not smoke but it and most likely the CPU died. The board could not boot and during POST it hung at the CPU LED. This does not sound like an isolated incident with Nathan. He is just telling my story also. My parts are on the way back to Newegg. I paid $55 to expedite it so they can get my replacement parts back to me ASAP. Don’t hammer Nathan unless you hammer me. The only difference is I couldn’t afford spare boards and chips and my system didn’t smoke. The MB and most likely the CPU died. Isolated? I think not.

        • Nathan Kirsch

          Rob – Did you happen to take any pictures or see the point of failure? If you haven’t sent the board back yet I’d be highly interested in seeing if you could figure out if a component on the VRM failed.

        • Johnny

          I also have just had this same issue. Running the 5960X on a X-99 Deluxe w/ Corsair 2800 Dominator Platinum and an EVGA 1000P2. I had the system on stock settings and was running smoothly. It happened during a restart and hung on a black screen and now the LEDs on board and fans flash but that’s it. I have a RMA in the works with Asus (great customer service experience here) but I got impatient and thought it only being the board that was dead, I picked up a MSI board and a Patriot 2400 kit; and had the same issue, hope I didn’t damage this board. Gonna head out tomorrow and get a new CPU and maybe a board. Luckily I have gone overboard and built 3 computers lately and I can just fall back on my Z97 SOC Force and 4790k or MSI Z87 GD65 and 4670k. I do know that with the little time I had with it the 5960x, it rocks and I will have two setups when this is all over I just don’t know if I am going to keep the MSI board as I really wanted the RVE, it was just out of stock today. Thanks for the article as I am now sure I did nothing to provoke this issue.

        • oldbat

          the board caught on fire for another reviewer. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=msi_x99_working&num=1

  • Christopher R

    I was considering upgrading in November/December. News like this make me wonder if I should wait until the new year, maybe overclocking isn’t the wisest thing to do this early in the game on this board ?

  • Tom Servo

    I thought ASUS’ fancy OC socket would be able to bypass the FIVRs? Did you have it enabled? Sounds like an excellent case for its existence, since it’d spread the current over multiple inputs (i.e. the additional pins).

    • Nathan Kirsch

      The only thing alerted in the BIOS when things melted down is the G.Skill XMP profile for the memory kit. Everything else was not altered. I have attached a picture from the UEFI that shows the settings.

      • Tom Servo

        ASUS reverse-engineered the purpose of the additional pins on the CPU, and it turns out that you can override the FIVRs and supply the appropriate voltages externally. I’d wager by doing that, you’re spreading the amperage via different traces than all over the standard VCCin and probably also let the mainboard load the VRMs more evenly.

        However that OC socket option needs to be turned on manually, it’s off by default (from what I’ve read, anyway, still waiting for prices to settle before buying into Haswell-E).

        I’d figure it’ll be a nice option to have, when going with things that are outside of the standards, like the 1.5V RAM. If you get the board back from Asus, I’d look into enabling the OC socket.

        • Nathan Kirsch

          I have multiple X99 Deluxe boards and 5960X processors, so I’m back up and running now (how I got you those screen shots). From my understating the ASUS OC Socket automatically enables when the board is overclocked and is off when the processor isn’t. ASUS isn’t saying what parameters enable it.

        • Isaac Kingsley

          Just casually having a few X99 and Extreme chips lying around, I envy you right now.

        • http://vgsage.com Azix

          prices to settle? you mean ddr4 or maybe the mobo. Those intel prices barely move

      • Dennis McCarthy

        I see 1.35V there for the XMP not 1.5V is the 1.5V a miss print or did you force it beyond the XMP voltage profile?

        • Steam

          I believe he said the HyperX works on 1.5
          not the g.skill

        • Nathan Kirsch

          Correct, the HyperX Predator Kit is XMP set to 1.5V. The G.Skill kit used right after was set to XMP settings of 1.35V.

  • medo

    Hard to say, too many variables :

    *DDR4 new voltage
    *new x99 platform
    *new Intel CPU with 6-8 core 140W

    I dont think companies like ASUS and MSI, that create mobo for AMD platform that have CPU can reach 220W, would cheap out on expensive mobo, and there internal Q.A testing wouldve caught something, also they would test many Intel CPU, however the only thing they cant predict, is what the consumer will use is RAM

  • Arb

    ASUS VRM’s failing again.. who would have thunk?

  • Homey

    that’s terrifying to read as I’ve purchased the X99 on the 1st of the month but yet to source the ram so it’ll be long after any supposed DOA terms before I can insert the ram and pray the thing doesn’t self destruct on me. Sorely tempted to drop from my aim for 2666 or above and go with 32 gigglybitz of 2400mhz now…. can’t wait for more info n updates to this thread…. negative news it may be but I thank you ever so muchly for the information nonetheless.

    • Tom Servo

      The higher clockrates on DDR3 made neglibible differences. I doubt it’ll be too different with DDR4, so going with 2400MHz for safety/reliability reasons isn’t unreasonable.

      • Homey

        thanks for that Tom (nothing worse than reading threads that are mere “Venting” of negativity, personal gripes and preferences)
        and as with everything these days… so thanks for the bit of positive feedback…. which is WHY this site thrives after all
        built by human beanies, utilised by the same etc so who knows.
        Besides Giglybits didnt make a comparitive board in their black range (tested for over 160 hours etc).
        I should’ve added my rig is for 20 HDD’s incl couple of M.2′s and totalling over 60 terriblebitz of data, 24/7 use frequent accessing to n fro.. Photoshop and dabbling with Auto Inventor etc oh and NO GAMING (unless I find an emulator for Space Invaderererz..heh heh)
        Would you say 32GB (4x8GB) of 2400MHz more than sufficient for now and future use (as I can simply lob in and double what I’d have?

  • Coach

    Things like this are difficult to identify since you’re using so many new components in these tests. The only proven component was your PSU. Personally, I’m thinking it was the mobo, but I’ll be following this to see. What a shame. :(

    • Nathan Kirsch

      Exactly and there is no way to figure out here exactly what caused it. Corsair and ASUS have been great at offering help and both companies will have their products back on Tuesday for testing. Hopefully we will be able to figure it out. Right now I got the same general setup (with a new board, CPU and a Corsair AX1200 PSU) up and running just fine for the past 10 hours or so.

      • James Baranski

        BTW I have used Corsair AX PSU’s with 1 of them failing.. Just saying..

      • Kuba Ober

        “there is no way to figure out here exactly what caused it” Only if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Only if.

      • Legitsu

        tom is right on with the solder ball point
        in addition to the point of the flux burning off there is also the fact that VRM’s get pretty fking hot more then hot enough to cause the solder to “melt” enough to cause a short if its physically close enough
        shotty solder work on ASUS’s part .. nuffsaid

  • Damion Bacchus

    thank you….. Asrock x99m killer it is,was gonna wait for the gene but ……..on another note could it be this new vrm design that Asus is bragging about, it is still in its infancy stage?

  • Kirk Martin

    I am slowly going off ASUS tech, they seem to be, well incompetent. Not only did my Asus mainboard keep saying I had a surge, and kept shutting down… I have gone through 4, yes 4 XM299Q monitors, just to get a working one. So this really does not surprise me at all… I have gone over to Gigabyte mainboards, I love what they have done with the bios, making it easy to use, with mouse control also… Really nice touch. And I have a performance boost, just from changing the mainboard, of my system. ;)

    • Jason

      Kirk, this bios with mouse control you speak of is called UEFI, all boards have it now. Don’t give Gigabyte too much credit. Asus still make the best boards on the market hands down.

      • Kirk Martin

        That might be so, but there customer service is pretty bad, had the pleasure of getting in touch with them over the last few weeks, and they did not want to know… So they lost another customer.

        • BrOOksy_210

          nah ive been using a tester model of Asrock’s X99 OC formula(hasnt been released yet..) i think Asrock will take home the gold sorry ASUS/GIGABYTE

        • James Baranski

          Asus and ASrock share technology. ASRock is owned by Pegatron….

      • Isaac Kingsley

        I’ve always used Asus boards and recommended Asus boards to people asking me about new builds, the build quality is generally pretty good. Their customer service sucks (from my experience), although i’m not to sure if it was the supplier messing me around. Had a chip burn out on me to be told ‘Theres a burn on one of the chips that has voided your warranty’, The burn was the reason I was RMAing the board.

        Recently switched to an MSI Gaming 7, so hopefully they live up to standard :D

    • Jon Ghosty Carr

      I have used a number of motherboards in my time and I have used Asus boards and they are not all that never had one fail though, but I had my last board which was a Sabertooth 990FX which is meant to be the best AM3+ board, but i switched to a Gigabyte board the 990FXA-UD3 better features better for overclocking, asus are over hyped …….

  • ScotA

    “Our worst fears were reassured.” People need reassurance, not fears. I think you mean your fears were confirmed.

    • Nathan Kirsch

      Correct!

    • http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wesley-Fick/184346154999538 Wesley Fick

      I would imagine that reassuring your worst fears is actually correct because now whenever Nathan boots up another X99 Deluxe, the thought goes through his head for a split second: “Am I ruining another $1400 worth of hardware by merely pressing this power switch?”

  • Mark Tran

    Interesting…I wonder if you tested other X99

    • Nathan Kirsch

      Our motherboard reviewer (Dan Stoltz) is testing EVGA and Gigabyte boards right now. MSI never sent us anything.

      • XENOS

        I wanted to buy a x99 system but after reading this article and comments…
        Should i wait until asus or corsair give a clear answer for this issue?
        Is it possible this problem will happen in a normal situation( not in overclocking mode)

    • Michael

      The Phoronix article was tested with a completely different motherboard. MSI vs. ASUS.

  • http://www.pugetsystems.com/bios.php?name=williamgeorge William M George

    That sucks! I really wonder if the memory voltage might be an issue, since the memory controller is on the CPU. DDR4 is designed for what, 1.2V? And the Intel specs show 2133MHz as being the designed speed for these CPUs… so maybe pushing that to 3000MHz and 1.5V (almost 30% and 25% higher than normal, respectively) is just too much? If so, it would reinforce my personal preference for standard speeds of memory. The tiny performance differences from high performance RAM is not worth this sort of risk :)

    • Michael

      For what it’s worth, the tests I did (Michael Larabel of Phoronix) were at stock speeds. This was my first time powering up the board, stock everything.