Product on Review: X99 WS-E/10G
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ASRock
Street Price: £693.59
How often are you left doing other things while you wait for that file transfer to complete? Have problems with buffering that 4k movie while the rest of the household are also streaming from your server? If like us you are the impatient type and want everything to work first time without compromising on quality or speed then perhaps you need more bandwidth. The X99 platform has most bases covered, multi-core processing, DDR4, multi GPU's and some boards can even team up a couple of LAN ports to enhance their network speed. This motherboard has all that and more.
The key attraction to this motherboard are the Two 10G BASE-T LAN ports by Intel® X540. A further two gigabit LAN ports by Intel® I210AT with all four LAN ports supporting teaming means this board represents perhaps the fastest LAN solution on the consumer market. We say consumer lightly though, perhaps 'pro-consumer/pro-enthusiast' would be a better description because this board may well have a massive amount of features including the 4 LAN ports, 4way SLI and a 12 phase power design the huge specification has a big price to match.
We've reviewed motherboards that exceed the 3 and 4 hundred pound mark but never have we had a board costing in excess of £600. Yeah you read that right - £600! Bargain hunters need not apply. That said, a board like this is likely to feature SSD RAID, Multi GPU's and a premium Intel processor be it extreme of Xeon and the cost of those components alone are likely to exceed two grand if not more so £600 for the foundation of such a monster setup is unlikely to be an issue.
For this reason we won't be focusing on the cost as it is unlikely to be the deciding factor, instead we will be looking at just what this motherboard is capable of. We will of course be using our usual suite of benchmarks to compare against other X99 motherboards but we will also be looking at the usefulness of the 4 port LAN setup in a home environment.
About ASRock
ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
