Best X99 motherboard under $400?

[lexidobe]

What I want is: best overclocking capability, stability, reliability and an m.2 slot. I am thinking Asus X99 Deluxe, but I heard that it does not overclock well and is not reliable. Ant Input is greatly appreciated.

[Dash Lambda]

1 minute ago, lexidobe said:

What I want is: best overclocking capability, stability, reliability and an m.2 slot. I am thinking Asus X99 Deluxe, but I heard that it does not overclock well and is not reliable. Ant Input is greatly appreciated.

I can't speak from experience, but I've only ever heard good things about the X99-Deluxe. The board doesn't matter nearly as much as the CPU for overclocking, so most will yield the same in the regard past a certain point. It's hard to go wrong with an ASUS board.

[Maxxtraxx]

Well, i'm going to side with Linus here. The Asus x99 ws(workstation) boards may be a real sweet spot for x99 performance and durability.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

You may want to check out the MSI X99A Gaming 7. 

Jay got his own 5930K higher on that board than either his Asrock or his Asus Deluxe would allow.

 

 

 

If Ebay is anything to go by, it should be well within your budget too.

 

[Schoolofmonkey]

26 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

You may want to check out the MSI X99A Gaming 7. 

Jay got his own 5930K higher on that board than either his Asrock or his Asus Deluxe would allow.

This is the video that lead me to buy my MSI X99a Gaming 7, yet Jay no longer uses it on his test bench even though he said he'll be using it for a long time.

Honestly the board is good if you're looking for a no BS x99 board, above basic features (nothing like the Asus x99 Deluxe/Rampage), but reliable.

It overclocks fine, it's really CPU dependent on how fair you go, my 5820k will only do 4.3Ghz@1.25v, yet I borrowed a mates 5820k and I could hit 4.5Ghz@1.22v.

Cache is a different story, because it doesn't have the OC socket you can't get over 3.5Ghz on the cache.

 

The one thing I don't like about the board is when you have more than 4 Sata devices the second SATA controller doesn't have any drivers, it shows up in Windows as a "standard SATA interface", it's really strange, works fine and drives run at the same speeds (benchmarked to make sure).

[gamerking]

2 hours ago, lexidobe said:

What I want is: best overclocking capability, stability, reliability and an m.2 slot. I am thinking Asus X99 Deluxe, but I heard that it does not overclock well and is not reliable. Ant Input is greatly appreciated.

gigabyte x99 soc champion is a great board. support for it for me was quick with bios questions   has m.2  i think its 8 or 10 sata ports . got to 4.3ghz on the core with 1.25v but was stable at 4.6ghz at 1.29v . havent done much in the cache i have a dud chip i think one i touch it at all wont boot

this is the board jay went with now , i guess your running either custom loop or AIO ? 

is just orange board .really any board that has decent reviews except for msi x99 sli plus steer far way from that line its udder trash .

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

28 minutes ago, Schoolofmonkey said:

The one thing I don't like about the board is when you have more than 4 Sata devices the second SATA controller doesn't have any drivers, it shows up in Windows as a "standard SATA interface", it's really strange, works fine and drives run at the same speeds (benchmarked to make sure).

hmm ... and there are no BIOS updates for that?  Any word from MSI? (I know from experience that their customer service is quite good, they're usually able to answer those kinds of questions)

 

I'm on the verge of buying one myself (would have gone today, but didn't feel like going out in the rain), but I'd be hooking 4 SSDs, a 2.5" hotswap bay and an M.2 to it, basically occupying SATA ports 1 to 7

[bomerr]

A lot of the older BIOS on X99 motherboards were not that stable. Any motherboard that has been updated to the new Broadwell-E BIOS should be quite good. So take your pick from Asus. Gigabyte, MSI.

 

Off the top of my head I would say an Asus X99-A or Pro are great deals because they have most of the important features Deluxe without the price. Asrock Extreme 4 is another good one. A lot of people like the MSI SLI. I would personally get a mobo in the $250 range as that's the best bang for the buck. 

[Schoolofmonkey]

51 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

hmm ... and there are no BIOS updates for that?  Any word from MSI? (I know from experience that their customer service is quite good, they're usually able to answer those kinds of questions)

 

I'm on the verge of buying one myself (would have gone today, but didn't feel like going out in the rain), but I'd be hooking 4 SSDs, a 2.5" hotswap bay and an M.2 to it, basically occupying SATA ports 1 to 7

Running the latest BIOS, it's the only BIOS that fully supports Windows 10.

 

Here's the pages from the manual about the SATA connectors, you'll understand what I mean, and address what using a M.2 SSD does (it disables 2 of the SATA ports).

[PeggersXtreme]

3 hours ago, lexidobe said:

What I want is: best overclocking capability, stability, reliability and an m.2 slot. I am thinking Asus X99 Deluxe, but I heard that it does not overclock well and is not reliable. Ant Input is greatly appreciated.

I'm using a board with a standard 2011-3 socket without the extra pins some have and I can say it doesn't make a whole lot of difference I got my 5960x clocked to 4.5ghz on 1.3v and can get it to 4.8ghz at 1.35v which is identical to my older more expensive board with the OC socket.

[PeggersXtreme]

2 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

You may want to check out the MSI X99A Gaming 7. 

Jay got his own 5930K higher on that board than either his Asrock or his Asus Deluxe would allow.

 

 

 

If Ebay is anything to go by, it should be well within your budget too.

 

Just be careful with the gaming series from MSI I don't know if the gaming 7 suffers from it but the gaming 9's ram slots are too close to the first pci-e slot my titan x with a backplate just barely fit.

[Schoolofmonkey]

15 minutes ago, PeggersXtreme said:

Just be careful with the gaming series from MSI I don't know if the gaming 7 suffers from it but the gaming 9's ram slots are too close to the first pci-e slot my titan x with a backplate just barely fit.

Nope, no problem with that.

(EVGA GTX980ti Hybrid)

[PeggersXtreme]

On 2/14/2016 at 2:08 AM, Schoolofmonkey said:

Nope, no problem with that.

(EVGA GTX980ti Hybrid)

That is good I sent my gaming 9 back cause I wasn't happy at how close the ram slots were to the GPU they were pushing on it. 

[Schoolofmonkey]

50 minutes ago, PeggersXtreme said:

That is good I sent my gaming 9 back cause I wasn't happy at how close the ram slots were to the GPU they were pushing on it. 

It's one thing I research before buying any new motherboard, got caught once before with a Gigabyte z97 board, the Galaxy GTX780ti HOF was sitting against the ram slots, stupid if you ask me.

The reason I didn't go with Asus at the time (I loved my z97 ROG Hero) was because of the power spiking issues with the OC sockets killing CPU's, but from what I understand that has been fixed with recent BIOS updates and USB 3.1 motherboard revisions.

Still can't complain about the Gaming 7 though for the price, just the lack of OC socket limits the Cache overclock to 3.5Ghz max.

[PeggersXtreme]

Just now, Schoolofmonkey said:

It's one thing I research before buying any new motherboard, got caught once before with a Gigabyte z97 board, the Galaxy GTX780ti HOF was sitting against the ram slots, stupid if you ask me.

The reason I didn't go with Asus at the time (I loved my z97 ROG Hero) was because of the power spiking issues with the OC sockets killing CPU's, but from what I understand that has been fixed with recent BIOS updates and USB 3.1 motherboard revisions.

Still can't complain about the Gaming 7 though for the price, just the lack of OC socket limits the Cache overclock to 3.5Ghz max.

yeah the motherboard companies should think more about their designs lol I am currently deciding between the Asus x99 pro or the Deluxe