Asus X99-A II Review

[ondoy]

Introduction
Haswell-E launched two years ago, it brought with it a new storage standards to the mainstream and additional PCI-E lanes.
This year Intel launched Broadwell-E and to prepare for this launch ASUS has released several X99 motherboards, one of it is the X99-A II.
Existing products can house the upcoming CPU requiring only a BIOS update.
The X99-A II utilises premium components including an OC socket, DIGI+ power control, T-topology circuit design and Crystal Sound 3 audio solution.
This makes it a good choice for users on a tight/reasonable budget.

Specifications:

Packaging and Contents
The board comes with the following bundle, user's guide, drivers disk, SLI bridge, Q-Shield (I/0), four SATA 6Gb/s cables,
CPU installation tool and extension cable for RGB strips.

 

[ondoy]

Board Pics
The motherboard has a digital 8-phase power design for the CPU, it also adopts a classic black and white color which looks fantastic.
The board has a jet black PCB, asus has also incorporated LED's into the PCI-E slot tabs and an additional lighting from the PCH.
Throughout the board there five fan connectors which can supply up to 3A of power. This board also supports up to 128 DDR4 memory @ 3200MHz.
The top PCIE slot is enclosed in a metal to provide more support.

The heatsink looks like a brushed aluminum with a plastic cover.

It also features a Realtek ALC1150 8-channel surround sound with 112dB SNR outpu and 104dB SNR input, for it's price this is a pretty solid on board audio solution.

 

[ondoy]

Aside from the lighting the board also features a M.2 and U.2 ports as well as SATA Express with 10 SATA 6Gbps ports.

The rear IO has a BIOS flash button, PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo, four USB 2.0, four USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Type-A, USB 3.1 Type-C, S/PDIF optical and 5 audio jacks.

The RGB header is a GRB header

The board also features ASUS OC socket, more info can be found here.

Conclusion
The X99-A is a solid motherboard with a lot of feature, the best board for budget minded users.
The board is fantastic and utilizes premium components including an 8-phase CPU power delivery, OC socket, high endurance capacitors and a thick PCB design.

Pros: Solid motherboard with plenty of useful features
Best board for users with tight/reasonable budget.
Cons: RGB is not everyone's cup of tea

 

[rchunter]

I like that the m.2 slot lays flat against the board. In the Asus x99 deluxe II the m.2 slot stands vertical. I'm either going to buy this board or the x99 deluxe II. I really want the dual intel lan on the deluxe version but I could care less about a lot of its other features like thunderbolt & wireless. Just have to decide if it's worth paying that much extra just to have dual i218v ports onboard.

 

[ondoy]

yup, this board is great if you want to jump into the x99 platform without those fancy features that you're not going to use anyways...
if you're on a budget you can't go wrong with this board...