smicha wrote:I need your advice guys.
Next week/month I am assembling a 4xTITAN computer. At first my choice went to Asus WS motherboard series, i.e., P9X79-E WS. But when I read some reviews and on newegg I decided not go with it
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131971
I also thought about evga x79 dark and asus rampage IV black edition.
Do you have any experience with a very good motherboard for 4xTITANs?
Hi Smicha,
I happen to have just started building a new machine on a P9X79-E WS, which I purchased after much research to get an optimal Octane / multi-GPU board. Admittedly, I have only just started the build but here is what I can say about some of those posts on newegg.com. I am not trying to change your mind or anything, just share the homework I have done and why I chose the board. I also mulled over it for a long time...
1. One of the main complaints seems to be around the bios upgrade seemingly as a result of the lack of proper info from Asus regarding the renaming convention of the bios flash. Asus just released a new bios in the last few days (v. 1406) and, after renaming to the correct convention (P9X79EWS.CAP), my board seemed to have flashed just fine (installing a 4930K);
2. The other main issue people seem to have is the USB 3.0 claim. Asus claim a "USB READY" feature is deceptive it seems because X79 chipsets can't natively support USB 3.0 as far as I know. But, assuming one does due research before investing in such a system, this fact is well known (here is one source:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... eview.html);
3. Then there are folk complaining about the ram clock speed at the max ram config of 64GB. I think it supports a limited amount of RAM products/manufacturer's in a 64GB config and at less than maximum clock rates. However, I am going for 32GIG for now and should be able to run that at 2400mhz, though this would not make a big difference in day to day work;
4. Asus support clearly sucks. I have had the same experience here in South Africa. They have their noses in the air instead of their feet and eyes on the ground. However, this fact seems to influence at least some of those reviews and I believe one should be aware of that when reading these reviews. Also bear in mind that many of these reviews were written before BIOS v. 1301 was release, which added support for IB-E processors (around August I think) - this was a major cause for MB's not posting.
My own conclusion is that, for a 'non-server' workstation board, the X79 with IB-E is still a winner, particularly if it offers 7 PCI slots. If you need USB 3.0 support and don't mind slightly less CPU power (I need both), go for Haswell i7 (LGA 1150 socket) board (there are many). But Haswell did not get a great reception and these chipsets have some other limitations (like only PCIe 2.0 support). If you have the budget and need to have the best of both worlds, go for the Z9PE-D8 WS (BorisGoreta's board) which has a c602 chipset, supports PCI 3.0 and 80 lanes to your 7 PCI slots (if you install both processors). But bear in mind it only takes Xeons and those babies are expensive.
Though the P9X79-E WS is probably one of the last Asus boards to be built on Intel's X79 aging chipset, it is too important a board for them to neglect. If the IB-E CPU's were crap, this would have been a whole different story. But they're not. There have been a number of bios upgrades for the board and I think that, despite Asus's poor technical support and unfortunate somewhat deceptive marketing, their engineering design team does not suffer those ills. It is a great board once you can live with the limitations listed above.
If you're still reading at this point, here is a link that helped me a bit in decision making:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1400061/asus ... -owners/10
Hope this is of value to some.
Seeker
You and Mr. Goreta should both be ashamed of yourselves... such a vulgar display of wealth and power!
