Asus X99 - Deluxe, Sabertooth or Rampage

bipolarbear · 21 Oct 2015 at 16:54

Hi, as subject suggests I want to upgrade to X99 with a 5930k and 2x980Ti's and i have narrowed my selection down to one of the above boards, but I can't decide which is best for my requirements (perhaps because there's not a lot between them)

Probably should mention I am currently using an intel Pro/1000PT dual-port gigabit card with teaming enabled, and I would like to keep this functionality. I note that both the Deluxe and Sabertooth have dual nics onboard, but they are on separate controllers, so i'm not sure what the point of that is. The Sabertooth is Intel/Realtek, while the Deluxe is Intel/Intel but again the second nic is a on a separate controller - can the Deluxe do nic teaming does anyone know?

I've also got an Asus Xonar D2X sitting boxed i've not been using, as i've thought the onboard sound with sufficient. I might give it another look and see if its noticeably better, otherwise i'll sell it.

I've got a total of 6 fans plus 1 temp sensor in my water loop all run off a corsair link commander mini, if I could junk this and run it all off the m/b that would be a bonus.

In terms of the boards themselves, everyone raves about the Rampage but i don't do much overclocking, and i dont need the wifi, and it has the ROG price premium...

The Deluxe... meh, I don't like the white. and again I don't need the wireless.

I really like the look of the Sabertooth, it's a really nice looking board. and the cheaper of the 3.

Reading back through this overly long post it seems obvious which one I'm leaning towards, but interested to know what owners of these boards think.

cheers
bb

bipolarbear · 21 Oct 2015 at 20:32

argh. Can an admin move this to motherboards please?

thx
bb

RJC · 21 Oct 2015 at 21:22

I will put a note in to get this moved.

theaterix · 24 Oct 2015 at 13:30

I am looking at the deluxe, or the other 2 white boards from Asus, the rampage is meh, ROG price. Red and black.
I personally think the Sabertooth or the Deluxe would look really nice!

GAM8LE · 24 Oct 2015 at 13:43

Asus X99 Deluxe:
It sounds like you don't need all the added extras that comes with the deluxe board so why not consider the x99 pro? It only comes with the wifi and not the extra stuff which results in a price of £259.99.(less than the sabretooth)

The other one is x99-s which looks the same, has no wifi but also doesn't have the m2 port and is Competitor.

In addition these boards have a reported problem with the OC socket frying CPU's - you can still overclock without the OC socket enabled to avoid this low possible defect

Asus rampage V extreme:
This board is way over the top for what you need based on your first post. It offers quad SLI and tools for proper overclocking which you said you wont utilise.

In addition - it is EATX and not all cases accept this size.

Asus TUF x99 sabretooth
I think this board should be the one to go for. You said you don't like the white of the x99-deluxe/pro/s and the sabretooth is only £20 more than the x99-pro I mentioned and doesn't include the features you wont use like wifi etc

Out of the three, I am going for the x99-pro as I like white and black but if I wasn't considering the colour scheme I would be going for the sabertooth

theaterix · 24 Oct 2015 at 13:47

C35799Gamble said:
Asus X99 Deluxe:
It sounds like you don't need all the added extras that comes with the deluxe board so why not consider the x99 pro? It only comes with the wifi and not the extra stuff which results in a price of £259.99.(less than the sabretooth)

The other one is x99-s which looks the same, has no wifi but also doesn't have the m2 port and is Competitor.

In addition these boards have a reported problem with the OC socket frying CPU's - you can still overclock without the OC socket enabled to avoid this low possible defect

Asus rampage V extreme:
This board is way over the top for what you need based on your first post. It offers quad SLI and tools for proper overclocking which you said you wont utilise.

In addition - it is EATX and not all cases accept this size.

Asus TUF x99 sabretooth
I think this board should be the one to go for. You said you don't like the white of the x99-deluxe/pro/s and the sabretooth is only £20 more than the x99-pro I mentioned and doesn't include the features you wont use like wifi etc

Out of the three, I am going for the x99-pro as I like white and black but if I wasn't considering the colour scheme I would be going for the sabertooth

This.
I am in the same boat, and looked at the price tags and features and really didnt think it was worth it for the Deluxe, but would be nice!
Im currently between the Pro and the sabertooth myself.

Hedge · 24 Oct 2015 at 22:07

Well I nearly went the green sniper and skylake route, but went for an Asus TUF X99 Sabertooth instead. Will just have to get a processor when its payday then Ill tell you how it goes in my new build

bipolarbear · 28 Oct 2015 at 18:01

Hi, well I'm back. And I did go for the Sabertooth along with the 5930k and the Corsair Dominator 16GB PC4-24000 (3000MHz). And so far unfortunately I am having nothing but problems with it. I will say from the outset that some of this gear was purchased from another vendor as I had credit with that vendor.... anyway, I put everything together and fired it up, it goes into the bios menu and I configured it for XMP and rebooted. thing wouldn't even post, I had to fiddle with the jumper on the m/b to reset the bios to get back into it. Tried this several times with the same result, system wont boot with XMP enabled - is this normal? The ram kit is one of the few 3000MHz kits certified for the board - but I am now told that the memory controller is on the cpu and no Intel cpus are certified past 2133MHz... so if that is indeed the case why do m/b manufacturers certify memory kits for their boards at 3000MHz?? It would seem like false advertising. Doesn't make sense to me. I think I have dodgy ram or m/b but convincing said vendor is going to be a task I think. Should have bought the whole lot from ocuk in the first place.

Hedge · 28 Oct 2015 at 18:26

Its gonna be a week or so until I build mine, I hope I dont run into similar issues.

tipes · 28 Oct 2015 at 18:28

bipolarbear said:
Hi, well I'm back. And I did go for the Sabertooth along with the 5930k and the Corsair Dominator 16GB PC4-24000 (3000MHz). And so far unfortunately I am having nothing but problems with it. I will say from the outset that some of this gear was purchased from another vendor as I had credit with that vendor.... anyway, I put everything together and fired it up, it goes into the bios menu and I configured it for XMP and rebooted. thing wouldn't even post, I had to fiddle with the jumper on the m/b to reset the bios to get back into it. Tried this several times with the same result, system wont boot with XMP enabled - is this normal? The ram kit is one of the few 3000MHz kits certified for the board - but I am now told that the memory controller is on the cpu and no Intel cpus are certified past 2133MHz... so if that is indeed the case why do m/b manufacturers certify memory kits for their boards at 3000MHz?? It would seem like false advertising. Doesn't make sense to me. I think I have dodgy ram or m/b but convincing said vendor is going to be a task I think. Should have bought the whole lot from ocuk in the first place.

Forget xmp setting for the moment. If you can re set the bios again and get back in - try setting the ram timings up manually in the bios to what they should be, and then see if it boots ok. The timings for your ram should be on the box or certainly on one of the sticks. Let us know how it goes.

Mark

bipolarbear · 29 Oct 2015 at 11:23

Thanks, did some further testing... the SPD timing for this memory is 15-15-15-36 at 1.2v (2133MHz). Tested timings according to the corsair site are 15-17-17-35 at 1.35v (3000MHz), I attempted to set these timing manually and bump the voltage to 1.35v. No matter what I did I could not get it to boot past 2133MHz.

I'm not happy with the board either, it doesn't recover from oc failures, requiring a manual bios reset each time. And there's no easy switch to reset the bios, there's a fiddly jumper on the base of the mb which is difficult to get to. Its only got the one bios as well so far as I can tell, so no backup bios like I'm used to with the gigabyte boards.

It won't recognize my 512GB Samsung m.2 SSD as a bootable device, I searched on this and found there's only a handful of M.2 drives which Asus have certified (although the bios can see it from the bios upgrade program thingy). Very annoying.

There's an orange led constantly lit on the board which isn't documented in the manual, down near where you plug the front panel connectors in. I don't know if this is a warning light or what.

All in all I think I'm going to have to return the cpu/mb/memory under the distance selling regs as not fit for purpose...

Not sure exactly what my rights are regarding that.

bipolarbear · 30 Oct 2015 at 15:13

argh... just realized i can only use either the M.2 slot or the 3rd PCIe x16 slot, but not both at the same time. I was aware according to the manual that the M.2 slot is shared with the bottom PCIe slot but I didn't think that meant it was one or the other... so basically I can have *either* my 512GB SSD M.2 drive, or my Xonar D2X audio card. But not both. Great. What a complete joke of a board.

colinmcr · 2 Nov 2015 at 16:57

bipolarbear said:
argh... just realized i can only use either the M.2 slot or the 3rd PCIe x16 slot, but not both at the same time. I was aware according to the manual that the M.2 slot is shared with the bottom PCIe slot but I didn't think that meant it was one or the other... so basically I can have *either* my 512GB SSD M.2 drive, or my Xonar D2X audio card. But not both. Great. What a complete joke of a board.

If you look very closely at the manual the asterix note regarding M.2 in use disabling the slot applies to a 28 lane CPU such as a 5820k.
For a 40 lane CPU such as 5930k and above it does not, I have the same board and I'd test this for you if I was at home by adding a sound card to mine, but I won't be home for another 3 weeks.
What cpu are you using? Not sure if anyone else here can test the theory with similar setup....

With regards to your making your M.2 bootable. I had to install win10 on a different ssd first, then once in win10 I went into disk management and formatted the M.2 drive from there. I then rebooted with bootable usb version of win10 installer and it then saw the M.2 correctly and installed no problems as boot drive.