The Azrock X99 9x Killer Fatality Edition Motherboard: A Comprehensive Review

I recently had the opportunity to work with the Azrock X99 9x Killer Fatality Edition motherboard, and I must say that it's been a real treat. The board is packed with features that make it an excellent choice for builders looking to create a powerful system. As I fired up the board, I was excited to see what all the fuss was about.

One of the first things I noticed was the layout of the USB ports. They're all neatly organized and close together, making it easy to manage cables. The board also features a built-in USB port that can be used for standard USB plugs, which is a nice touch. Another feature that caught my eye was the motherboard's power delivery system. With a 64-bit engineer running in the background, I was able to observe how the board handled power management.

I decided to put the board through its paces by overclocking it. I used one of the pre-selected speeds recommended by Azrock and was pleased with the results. The board ran smoothly at 4.4 GHz, which is impressive considering the base clock speed. What's even more impressive is that the board only required a voltage of 1.3 volts to reach this speed, whereas I had previously struggled to achieve the same result with my Asus board, which required around 1.34 volts.

The board also features a triple radiator system, which allows for excellent cooling. In fact, the Max package temperature was still within a safe range, even with temperatures in the upper 40s to mid-50s Celsius. This is no small feat, considering that the board has a high thermal load due to its powerful components.

In terms of features, I was pleased to see that the motherboard had all the bells and whistles. It's not uncommon for high-end motherboards to have an abundance of ports and connectors, but this board really takes it to the next level. The onboard audio is also exceptional, with multiple audio jacks and a high-quality analog-to-digital converter (ADC).

One thing that did strike me as a bit odd was the lack of PXE support on the board's chipset. This might be a deal-breaker for some users who rely heavily on PXE to configure their motherboard. However, this is a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent product.

I'm also a big fan of Azrock products, having used and recommended their OC formula boards in the past. The X99 9x Killer Fatality Edition lives up to these expectations, with a user-friendly interface and plenty of features to make it easy to overclock and configure.

In short, I'm thoroughly impressed with the Azrock X99 9x Killer Fatality Edition motherboard. It's a top-notch product that's sure to please even the most demanding users. If you're in the market for an x99 platform motherboard, this is definitely worth considering. Follow me on Twitter for more updates and reviews!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up guys J2 cense here and CES was a lot of fun but of course it's time to get back to work now as you may or may not recall a few months ago I built myself a new test bench which I called project Bloodshed you know because the coolant made it look like blood and stuff now I had a pretty sweet red and gunmetal theme going on but unfortunately the x99 deluxe didn't really match all that well so when asz Rock contacted me asking if I was interested in taking a look at one of their new x99 motherboards I was all over that x99x killer fatality board it is definitely a sexy piece of Hardware with its improved radiator support and legendary noise optimization the new Define R5 from fractal design is a PC Builder dream come true click the link in the description to learn more now motherboards are one of those things that I don't really feel they get enough attention I mean sure raw CPU power video cards RAM and all that stuff is direct contributors to the overall PC speed and experience but let's not forget that none of those devices can communicate without a motherboard and seeing that the motherboard is also tasked with things like power delivery to the CPU PCI Express components hard drive communication fan control overclocking it's something that needs to be paid attention to now when it comes to choosing the right motherboard trust me manufacturers know this this which is why they are keeping they keep packing more and more features to try and entice buyers to notice their particular models now ASRock is one of those brands that I don't feel is really given enough regard when it comes to do yourselfers in fact when I purchased my ASRock z77 OC formula back in 2013 I really was concerned that I was making a mistake since that brand really doesn't carry as much Prestige as say Asus MSI or gigabyte but man the more I played around with the board the more I realized that azrock really does take what they do serious now I could easily spend all day going over the specs of the fatality x99 killer so instead I'm going to go ahead and focus on some of the main points that I think make this board really interesting now first off many x99 motherboards currently only support up to 64 GB of ddr4 but the killer supports up to 128 of ECC and non-cc RAM 3,000 MHz plus now I already hear you why would we want 128 GB of RAM that's so overkill for gaming well you're right but remember the x99 platform is already overkill for gaming and really apps appeals more to the content creator and editors and other workstation grade Builders many of which can and do benefit for more RAM so that's one thing that I love about this board is the fact that it contains things that appeal to both sides of that Spectrum making it easy to have an an all-encompassing build suitable for both Gamers and workstation needs the overclocking on this board it's pretty straightforward due to the very easy to navigate UEFI bios without getting all crazy and over complicated like some other brands on the market but not only is the BIOS easy to navigate the power delivery is up to par as well with 60 amp power chokes nichon 12K Platinum Japanese capacitors 12-phase power delivery and oversized heat sinks keeping everything nice and cool now we'll definitely be overclocking this bad boy and giving some feedback at the end of the video regarding how it all went especially compared to the x99 deluxe motherboard which it's replacing now something else worth noting on this motherboard is that it has got a dual gbit land one being the Intel i218 V and the other being the Qualcomm atheros killer e2200 for gaming now the advertise that the e2200 is capable of prioritizing gaming packets which increase uh gaming speed and reduce the lag and actually prioritizes all the information based on the games that you're playing I have no way to test this claim uh but at the very least having two ethernet Nicks is good to have a backup in case one fails so there is that now for audio the x99 killer features Purity sound 2.0 and 7.1 Channel HD audio output uh has the real Tech ALC 1150 codec if you're like me and happen to be running some power hungry cans for audio it also features a power uh headphone amplifier that can drive up to 600 ohms of impedance and since high-end audio is becoming more and more affordable having a headphone jack like that is actually pretty nice to to see now when it comes to Graphics uh this board does feature three PCI Express gen 36x slots and two gen 21x slots along with SLI and Crossfire support now since this motherboard does not have any sort of plx Chip uh can become a little bit confusing on how the lanes operate when using a 5820k CPU with 28 Lanes versus the 40 Lanes found on the 5930k and the 5960x so rather than over over complicate this video by mentioning all the various combinations of G 2 and gen 3 uh Lane utilization per CPU I'm just going to refer you to the motherboard's manufacturing specs and their website to figure out how it's going to work for you one thing worth noting is that three-way Crossfire and SLI is not supported on the 5820k which is kind of a bummer because it could if it had plx which has actually been very popular on the z97 series allowing many Brands to offer up to four-way SLI or Crossfire on CPUs that otherwise couldn't handle it now for storage to killer features 10 SATA 36 GB per second ports raid 01510 and Intel rapid storage 13 but they also have this thing called HDD saver basically you power your hard drives off the motherboard instead of the power supply allowing you to control when they turn on and off via software now they say it's for added security and longer lifespan of hard drives letting them without letting them spin at all times um personally this is something I don't really find all that interesting I don't keep important storage on my local machine uh and I don't know how useful you guys would find that but it is a function in here and unfortunately the downside of it is you have to use a pretty ugly proprietary cable which is not sleeved or anything but ASRock is really proud of this function so I may have figured it's at least worth mentioning um if you find that to be kind of cool now also worth mentioning is it does have Ultra m.2 socket supporting sata 3 6 gbit per second as well as an m.2 PCI Express gen 3x4 for 32 gbits per second uh data transfer rate now as I mentioned I could go all day on the features packed into this board I mean just look at the Box there's a lot going on there in fact if I picked up this box say off the Microcenter shelf I would probably be a bit confused to what to look at there's a lot going on but I mean it's got highdensity power connectors for better power connections 2 oz copper PCB layers making it very heavy along with a very sexy black sapphire PCB old school PS2 connectors for gamers who love their LaGree old school mice and key ke boards a fatality Mouse port for custom pulling rates 125 HZ to 1,000 HZ the Thunderbolt 2.0 ready anti-static protection anti- moisture protection and the list goes on and on so let's just go ahead and get it installed and go from there transition so there we go guys the azrock fatality x99x killer motherboard uh looks fantastic it has lots of features that I actually like on there and yeah there's still some parts laying around I I literally just fired this one up messing all just still chilling here showing you guys I'm pretty messy Builder which I've shown in the past before but the uh killer motherboard has a lot of features that I really like I like how the USB 3.0 are close together I like that it actually has a USB plug built onto the motherboard that you can do a standard USB plugin there's actually a lot of things I could actually use that for now I've got a64 engineer running here in the background and I didn't do anything for the overclocking on this except for going into the BIOS and using one of their pre-selected speeds which they've kind of determined already where the setting should be based on their own preliminary testing on all of their engineering samples of the different chips now this is 4.4 GHz which is the same that I was running my test bench on with the Asus board but what I noticed is it's doing it at 1.3 08 volts and the only way I was able to get 4.4 GHz stable on the Asus was to run about 1.34 4 volts so it's running less voltage and just as stable and in fact right now we're running currently cores in the upper 40s to mid-50s and we are looking at a Max package temperature of 68 celsi right now sitting at 62 Cel and that is with a triple Radiator on there triple 30 mil radiator which is very very standard size it's not oversized 45 mil or anything like that now I do have a lot of fantastic things to say about the motherboard I don't really have anything negative to say which is very rare I think all the features are in line I think it gives you tons of the tons of features a very good price point the fact that the Intel Nick on there is Intel Windows was able to identify that right away so I didn't have to use a USB port or USB thumb drive or anything because I have no Optical on here to install any of the drivers I was able to install my ethernet into the Nick on the Intel side download all my drivers be up and running and as you can see a motherboard Swap and my windows is still fully up and running that's because we're using the uh same controllers for the SSD so it was actually very simple to get that migrated over but I just want to show here using the and it's not even automated it's not like the Asus you know five-way optimization where it goes through and does a bunch of tests and then fails and figures out what's stable it I just chose it in a drop down and it's perfectly stable so we got a pretty good overclock on here 1.1 GHz it's overclock by simply selecting a drop- down menu and a button and it's fully stable temperatures are great it's not throwing a ton of voltage at it to try and do that so I'm very happy with that uh overall the motherboard would have been nice to see plx on there for those extra synthetic Lanes rather than you know the 582k only has 28 Lanes on there which makes some graphics card conf utilization a little bit difficult three-way is not even an option on this chip that's too bad but anyway guys the asra Rock x99x killer motherboard here the fatality version I think it's a fantastic motherboard in fact it's going to be staying on this test bench they didn't tell me I had to send it back but either way they're not getting it back guys it's been J2 cents I hope this video has helped in some way when it comes to choosing your x99 platform motherboard they do also have this same motherboard in the Z series a z97 series so if you guys are on mainstream platform make you make sure you check that out it's got all the same functionality on there as well it's got plenty of fan headers on there the built-in audio on there fantastic in fact I'm running all of my fans on this system directly off the motherboard itself and the fan control software is also very very simple to use I think azrock has definitely got themsel a winner on this one here I I am a genuine fan of azrock products ever since using the z77 OC formula which they also have an OC formula version of this motherboard as well which pulls out all the overclocking stops so there you go guys js2 cents taking a look at the azrock x99 9x killer fatality Edition motherboard I I think I said that wrong fatality x99x killer motherboard make sure you guys check it out if you're looking at building an x99 system tuned for gamers and overclocking as always guys follow on Twitter if you have any questions and I will see you in the next one whathey what's up guys J2 cense here and CES was a lot of fun but of course it's time to get back to work now as you may or may not recall a few months ago I built myself a new test bench which I called project Bloodshed you know because the coolant made it look like blood and stuff now I had a pretty sweet red and gunmetal theme going on but unfortunately the x99 deluxe didn't really match all that well so when asz Rock contacted me asking if I was interested in taking a look at one of their new x99 motherboards I was all over that x99x killer fatality board it is definitely a sexy piece of Hardware with its improved radiator support and legendary noise optimization the new Define R5 from fractal design is a PC Builder dream come true click the link in the description to learn more now motherboards are one of those things that I don't really feel they get enough attention I mean sure raw CPU power video cards RAM and all that stuff is direct contributors to the overall PC speed and experience but let's not forget that none of those devices can communicate without a motherboard and seeing that the motherboard is also tasked with things like power delivery to the CPU PCI Express components hard drive communication fan control overclocking it's something that needs to be paid attention to now when it comes to choosing the right motherboard trust me manufacturers know this this which is why they are keeping they keep packing more and more features to try and entice buyers to notice their particular models now ASRock is one of those brands that I don't feel is really given enough regard when it comes to do yourselfers in fact when I purchased my ASRock z77 OC formula back in 2013 I really was concerned that I was making a mistake since that brand really doesn't carry as much Prestige as say Asus MSI or gigabyte but man the more I played around with the board the more I realized that azrock really does take what they do serious now I could easily spend all day going over the specs of the fatality x99 killer so instead I'm going to go ahead and focus on some of the main points that I think make this board really interesting now first off many x99 motherboards currently only support up to 64 GB of ddr4 but the killer supports up to 128 of ECC and non-cc RAM 3,000 MHz plus now I already hear you why would we want 128 GB of RAM that's so overkill for gaming well you're right but remember the x99 platform is already overkill for gaming and really apps appeals more to the content creator and editors and other workstation grade Builders many of which can and do benefit for more RAM so that's one thing that I love about this board is the fact that it contains things that appeal to both sides of that Spectrum making it easy to have an an all-encompassing build suitable for both Gamers and workstation needs the overclocking on this board it's pretty straightforward due to the very easy to navigate UEFI bios without getting all crazy and over complicated like some other brands on the market but not only is the BIOS easy to navigate the power delivery is up to par as well with 60 amp power chokes nichon 12K Platinum Japanese capacitors 12-phase power delivery and oversized heat sinks keeping everything nice and cool now we'll definitely be overclocking this bad boy and giving some feedback at the end of the video regarding how it all went especially compared to the x99 deluxe motherboard which it's replacing now something else worth noting on this motherboard is that it has got a dual gbit land one being the Intel i218 V and the other being the Qualcomm atheros killer e2200 for gaming now the advertise that the e2200 is capable of prioritizing gaming packets which increase uh gaming speed and reduce the lag and actually prioritizes all the information based on the games that you're playing I have no way to test this claim uh but at the very least having two ethernet Nicks is good to have a backup in case one fails so there is that now for audio the x99 killer features Purity sound 2.0 and 7.1 Channel HD audio output uh has the real Tech ALC 1150 codec if you're like me and happen to be running some power hungry cans for audio it also features a power uh headphone amplifier that can drive up to 600 ohms of impedance and since high-end audio is becoming more and more affordable having a headphone jack like that is actually pretty nice to to see now when it comes to Graphics uh this board does feature three PCI Express gen 36x slots and two gen 21x slots along with SLI and Crossfire support now since this motherboard does not have any sort of plx Chip uh can become a little bit confusing on how the lanes operate when using a 5820k CPU with 28 Lanes versus the 40 Lanes found on the 5930k and the 5960x so rather than over over complicate this video by mentioning all the various combinations of G 2 and gen 3 uh Lane utilization per CPU I'm just going to refer you to the motherboard's manufacturing specs and their website to figure out how it's going to work for you one thing worth noting is that three-way Crossfire and SLI is not supported on the 5820k which is kind of a bummer because it could if it had plx which has actually been very popular on the z97 series allowing many Brands to offer up to four-way SLI or Crossfire on CPUs that otherwise couldn't handle it now for storage to killer features 10 SATA 36 GB per second ports raid 01510 and Intel rapid storage 13 but they also have this thing called HDD saver basically you power your hard drives off the motherboard instead of the power supply allowing you to control when they turn on and off via software now they say it's for added security and longer lifespan of hard drives letting them without letting them spin at all times um personally this is something I don't really find all that interesting I don't keep important storage on my local machine uh and I don't know how useful you guys would find that but it is a function in here and unfortunately the downside of it is you have to use a pretty ugly proprietary cable which is not sleeved or anything but ASRock is really proud of this function so I may have figured it's at least worth mentioning um if you find that to be kind of cool now also worth mentioning is it does have Ultra m.2 socket supporting sata 3 6 gbit per second as well as an m.2 PCI Express gen 3x4 for 32 gbits per second uh data transfer rate now as I mentioned I could go all day on the features packed into this board I mean just look at the Box there's a lot going on there in fact if I picked up this box say off the Microcenter shelf I would probably be a bit confused to what to look at there's a lot going on but I mean it's got highdensity power connectors for better power connections 2 oz copper PCB layers making it very heavy along with a very sexy black sapphire PCB old school PS2 connectors for gamers who love their LaGree old school mice and key ke boards a fatality Mouse port for custom pulling rates 125 HZ to 1,000 HZ the Thunderbolt 2.0 ready anti-static protection anti- moisture protection and the list goes on and on so let's just go ahead and get it installed and go from there transition so there we go guys the azrock fatality x99x killer motherboard uh looks fantastic it has lots of features that I actually like on there and yeah there's still some parts laying around I I literally just fired this one up messing all just still chilling here showing you guys I'm pretty messy Builder which I've shown in the past before but the uh killer motherboard has a lot of features that I really like I like how the USB 3.0 are close together I like that it actually has a USB plug built onto the motherboard that you can do a standard USB plugin there's actually a lot of things I could actually use that for now I've got a64 engineer running here in the background and I didn't do anything for the overclocking on this except for going into the BIOS and using one of their pre-selected speeds which they've kind of determined already where the setting should be based on their own preliminary testing on all of their engineering samples of the different chips now this is 4.4 GHz which is the same that I was running my test bench on with the Asus board but what I noticed is it's doing it at 1.3 08 volts and the only way I was able to get 4.4 GHz stable on the Asus was to run about 1.34 4 volts so it's running less voltage and just as stable and in fact right now we're running currently cores in the upper 40s to mid-50s and we are looking at a Max package temperature of 68 celsi right now sitting at 62 Cel and that is with a triple Radiator on there triple 30 mil radiator which is very very standard size it's not oversized 45 mil or anything like that now I do have a lot of fantastic things to say about the motherboard I don't really have anything negative to say which is very rare I think all the features are in line I think it gives you tons of the tons of features a very good price point the fact that the Intel Nick on there is Intel Windows was able to identify that right away so I didn't have to use a USB port or USB thumb drive or anything because I have no Optical on here to install any of the drivers I was able to install my ethernet into the Nick on the Intel side download all my drivers be up and running and as you can see a motherboard Swap and my windows is still fully up and running that's because we're using the uh same controllers for the SSD so it was actually very simple to get that migrated over but I just want to show here using the and it's not even automated it's not like the Asus you know five-way optimization where it goes through and does a bunch of tests and then fails and figures out what's stable it I just chose it in a drop down and it's perfectly stable so we got a pretty good overclock on here 1.1 GHz it's overclock by simply selecting a drop- down menu and a button and it's fully stable temperatures are great it's not throwing a ton of voltage at it to try and do that so I'm very happy with that uh overall the motherboard would have been nice to see plx on there for those extra synthetic Lanes rather than you know the 582k only has 28 Lanes on there which makes some graphics card conf utilization a little bit difficult three-way is not even an option on this chip that's too bad but anyway guys the asra Rock x99x killer motherboard here the fatality version I think it's a fantastic motherboard in fact it's going to be staying on this test bench they didn't tell me I had to send it back but either way they're not getting it back guys it's been J2 cents I hope this video has helped in some way when it comes to choosing your x99 platform motherboard they do also have this same motherboard in the Z series a z97 series so if you guys are on mainstream platform make you make sure you check that out it's got all the same functionality on there as well it's got plenty of fan headers on there the built-in audio on there fantastic in fact I'm running all of my fans on this system directly off the motherboard itself and the fan control software is also very very simple to use I think azrock has definitely got themsel a winner on this one here I I am a genuine fan of azrock products ever since using the z77 OC formula which they also have an OC formula version of this motherboard as well which pulls out all the overclocking stops so there you go guys js2 cents taking a look at the azrock x99 9x killer fatality Edition motherboard I I think I said that wrong fatality x99x killer motherboard make sure you guys check it out if you're looking at building an x99 system tuned for gamers and overclocking as always guys follow on Twitter if you have any questions and I will see you in the next one what\n"