The Box, The Accessories, The Board
If you are looking for a tiny box, look elsewhere. Asrock has made the box nice and big. There is Fatal1ty branding all over it. Honestly, I would have liked it if they toned that down a bit. You honestly don’t need the guys face on the box (and bios) but hey, it is their design. Inside the box, the board is packaged very well. There is a nice chunk of foam covering both sides of the board. Inside the box containing the accessories you get mostly your standard accessories. SLI cables, SATA cables, molex to sata power connectors, and a few other things littler the box. One accessory that really stuck out was the front panel USB 3.0 ports and 2.5″ bay adapter combo unit. This is great for people that do not have a 2.5″ drive bay in their case and a welcome addition.
Moving on we come to the motherboard itself. You get Fatal1ty branding on the chipset heatsink and mosfet heatsink. The heatsinks themselves do a nice job and keep things nice and cool even while overclocking. The CPU socket area is nice and clean, a welcome addition for extreme overclockers out there.
There is also a decent amount of space between the CPU socket and the memory slots. While you do not get 8 memory slots like some other boards, 4 dimm slots is still more than enough unless you have that urge to run outragous amounts of memory. I had no issues installing a standard sized 120mm heatsink, however if you have tall memory and wish to install something like the Noctua NH-D14 watch out. You will have issues with the memory htting the heatsink. With a waterblock I had no issues at all with mounting.
Installing and removing video cards is great with the X79 Professional. With no fake North Bridge heatsink in the way you do not have to worry about a lack of clearance to hit the tab that ejects the card in the PCI-E slot.
Speaking of the PCI-E slots, if you want to run 4-way SLI/ Crossfire there is sufficient space if your case has enough slots. In addition to four full length PCI-E slots, you also get a 1x slot and two PCI slots. It is nice to have a motherboard maker offer up some connectivity for people that still like to rock a legacy expansion card.
A feature I really like is the inclusion of a LED debug display. I can’t count the amount of times I have had to guess how many beeps a board is making only to find out I was counting them wrong. The debug display makes figuring out what is wrong a quick and easy experience.
Looking at the amount of SATA ports you get a whopping ten of them. Six of which are SATA3. Did I mention there are also four USB 3.0 ports on this board, plus four more if you use the front panel adapter. This board is loaded with connectivity.
