Closer Look / Product Photos
The Killer arrived in a retail package which is typical for motherboards flat box. Inside we will find everything required for installation so user’s manual, quick installation guide, SATA data cables, SLI bridges, I/O shield and WiFi antennas.
The motherboard itself is well protected by thick foam.
The Killer is the whole black with some exceptions in silver like PCIe slot “shields” or power section heatsink. On the PCB we will also find large K letter.
I/O ports and fragile elements near were covered by the plastic cover. It also makes the motherboard to look better.
There are not many differences between the Killer and previously reviewed X299 Extreme4 motherboard. However, the differences can be significant to some users. The Killer has dual-band, Intel 802.11ac WiFi controller, three Ultra M.2 sockets for the highest speed SSD and support for three graphics cards in SLI mode. Things that can be important for some users while others will pick the cheaper option. Good that ASRock gives us that choice.
ASRock X299 Killer also has two BIOS chips with CMOS reset button on the back of the motherboard which gives easy access without opening the PC case.
The Killer offers us 11 phase CPU power section which is enough for every Skylake-X processor and there are no issues with overheating, even though this motherboard doesn’t have huge heatsinks that we can find on ASRock X299 XE motherboards like the Taichi or Professional i9. There were no issues to reach our CPU’s thermal limits using the i9-7900X processor and that’s a bit over 300W under load. It’s hard to find better cooling that will handle these processors so just to let you know, the Killer can handle more than you may set on any Skylake-X processor. On the other hand, I’m not sure how 18-core processors react on single 8-pin power connector but I guess that when anyone spends so much money then will rather look for a higher series motherboard. Of course officially all Skylake-X processors are supported on X299 Killer motherboard and I’m sure that ASRock tested that.
Let’s move to the next page and check how the BIOS/UEFI looks like.
