Conclusion and Verdict
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of playing with a lot of motherboards with various different chipsets … and I have to say, the X99 chipset is one serious platform for the enthusiast. Not only does it cost more than your mainstream Z170 setups, it actually requires a completely different chip … NO Skylakes – ONLY the Broadwell chips with socket LGA 2011-v3 are compatible with the X99 motherboards. So make sure you do your homework and find out exactly what you need before going any further.
As far as performance is concerned, I’m really impressed with what the ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer 3.1 can do. Armed with our Intel Core i7-6800K, we archived some pretty amazing scores in all of our benchmarks. And this is with default BIOS settings.
Overclockers would love this motherboard. The OC tweaker is easy to use, and there are tons of BIOS options to tweak and fine tune your CPU speeds and memory timings. We didn’t overclock our Intel Core i7-6800K processor too much … at 4.0Ghz, it was plenty for us to complete ur test. Of course, I’m sure many of you will probably want to push it to 4.5GHz or 4.8GHz … and to achieve this, you’ll need a motherboard that do that. The ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer 3.1 is designed just for that …
If you’re after a motherboard with lots of extras, then the ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer 3.1 is for you! It’s absolutely packed with some amazing features. These include onboard reset/power-on switches, dual BIOS, Intel® LAN + Qualcomm® Atheros® Killer LAN, Audio – Purity Sound™ 2, supports Quad Channel DDR4 3000+(OC), 10 x USB 3.0, 2 x 3.1 (USB-C), 10 x SATA3 ports, 3 PCIe 3.0 x16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x1, Thunderbolt, SLI and Crossfire ready … boy the list goes on!
And if you’re an overclocker who’s after stability, you’ll be happy to know that this motherboard comes with ASRock’s Super Alloy feature, which contains XXL Aluminum Alloy Heatsink, Premium 60A Power Choke, Premium Memory Alloy Choke, Ultra Dual-N MOSFET (UDM) and Nichicon 12K Platinum Caps.
Even though I’ve missed 3 generations of CPUs, luckily for me, not much has changed in terms of platforms and technologies. We still use an ATX motherboard and we still use the PCIE slot for graphics cards. The things which are new to me … are the DDR4 ram, the different CPU socket types and the built-in extras such as Thunderbolt, USB-C/3.1 and M.2 PCIE connectors. Apart from that, it really took me now time to get back in to the rhythm of things.
The ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer 3.1 motherboard will cost you around USD $350, which I think is correctly priced. You might find that the price may have recently dropped due to newer motherboard releases from ASRock, such a their X99 Taichi, X99 Extreme 4 and X99 Extreme 6. Buy now at Amazon – https://goo.gl/cR6ILa
Pros:
- Impressive feature set
- Rock sold stability via ASRock Super Alloy
- Masses of BIOS options for overclocking and tweaking
- Onboard reset/power on switches
- Dual BIOS
Cons:
- 4-pin molex for PICE power on the motherboard is a bit dated
Final Thoughts:
The ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer 3.1 is an extremely good motherboard that’s absolutely packed with some great features. Really? Yes, it’s what we’ve used in our Project Core Arancio. The only things that’s missing are fancy Aurora LEDs. If you don’t like the Fatal1ty branding on ASRock’s motherboards … seriously, don’t worry about it! What you’re paying for an ASRock motherboard that’s rock solid, offers good performance and you can overclock the hell out of your CPU 😉
