Orduu wrote:
Well thats really dissapointing , X99 lineup is thus far underwhelming for me and worse than Z97 lineup. I cant wait with my build that long. Only vendors with X99 mATX currently are Asrock and Evga but I dont like these boards featurewise.
The ASRock features aren't that bad. They are basically both the same board with different colors and network controllers (and the Killer having a couple of buttons, extra heat pipe and heat sink, and software to expose the mouse polling rate). Support for ECC DRAM is very nice and I like the on-board power distribution controller for HDD/SSD/ODD. They did just throw away four of the PCI-e 3.0 lanes because of the 28-lanes of the i7-5820K, though...I wish they could have added a second M.2 slot that would be disabled if you used a 28-lane chip. I'm also not a fan of sharing I/O between interfaces, like they did with the eSATA, M.2, and SATA ports.
I'm not a fan of the EVGA board, either. They threw away 4 PCI-e 3.0 lanes, too. The M.2 slot only supports one, rather short card length. Etc. etc.
My use case is to have multiple VMs running with 24x7 operation and functioning as a file server. I take multitasking to the extreme and have a ridiculous amount of things going simultaneously. Therefore, I need a lot of RAM in a very stable system, so 8 DIMM slots with support for ECC would be very nice (I don't like turning on my screen to find something has crashed). I do have my computer on a shelf with limited height, so I'm using an HTPC chassis, necessitating a µATX at the largest. My i7-930 in an EVGA X58 SLI Micro will completely freeze up when I have more than 2 VMs running at any given moment and I find the system rather slow when it has to page a lot of stuff.
MarshallR@ASUS wrote:
I can say in 2014 there certainly won't be any more ROG boards. Apart from X99-A and Pro launching by ~Oct, we are researching what TUF users will need for a possible Sabertooth X99 late in Q4, but so far that's it.
During 2015 - when the X99 market size potentially increases as price of DDR4 and some new components come down - I guess we will re-evaluate adding Formula/Gene/BE boards to the lineup.
You know what my vote is for...so if you want to be innovative, do some efficient packaging of the power circuitry and be the very first to bring a µATX board with 8 DIMM slots to market:
Skunk wrote:
I would love a µATX board, as well, to move on from my EVGA X58 SLI Micro. My ideal motherboard would be a no-frills µATX that has full functionality of the processor and chipset while maximizing power efficiency and minimizing latency. The stripped down nature would make it almost a hybrid between a workstation board and consumer performance board (kind of like a µATX version of Gigabyte's GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI).
Processor & Memory
- Full support for single socket Xeon E5 v3 processors
- 4-channel point-to-point DDR4 memory
- ECC & non-ECC UDIMM/RDIMM memory support
- Support for NV-memory when it becomes available (new pins on memory interface are enabled)
- Support for at least DDR4-3200 MHz (I don't want the motherboard to be the limiter of memory performance instead of the DIMM)
- Support for Trusted Platform Module 1.2+
I/O
- No switches, bridges, or adapters aside from the chipset (C610), ethernet controller (Intel I350), and wireless card (M.2 card)
- Ethernet controller would get 4 of the PCI-e 2.0 lanes from the chipset and support remote wake-up calls
- Wireless card would get the other 4 PCI-e 2.0 lanes from the chipset in an M.2 slot
- Wireless card should be able be upgradable to support a tri-band IEEE 802.11ad (2.4GHz + 5GHz + 60GHz) (if not implement - there are tri-band modems available now) and Bluetooth 4.x (ZigBee and Z-Wave with Thread, AllJoyn, and MQTT support, too, if possible) wireless module with soft access point capability
- 2 x 16x PCI-e 3.0 slots in slot positions 1 and 3 (second slot gets downgraded to 8x slot with 28 lane processor)
- 2 x M.2 slots for SSDs with 4 PCI-e 3.0 lanes each from the processor (Port 1a & 1b on IOU2; 2nd M.2 slot not enabled with 28 lane processor)
- 2 x USB 2.0 through internal header and remaining 6 available from chipset on rear panel (preferably with USB Type-C ports with some Type-C to Type-A adapters included...These boards should be expected to operate for at least 3 years and there definitely will be many devices with USB Type-C ports on them coming out in that time period)
- 2 x USB 3.0 through internal header and remaining 4 available from chipset on rear panel (Same thing with USB Type-C ports...)
- All SAS/SATA ports available from chipset exposed (Just like the ASRock X99 µATX boards, except the two ports above the screw mounting hole should be pointing up for flexibility and it won't get in the way of any expansion card)
- PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse interface through chipset
- Audio through chipset
- Thunderbolt header for expansion card
Thermal
- Keep in mind that µATX boards are compact and going into compact cases where air is not as free flowing, especially on the top where the VRMs are. Keep the heat sinks very low profile with a heat pipe over the VRMs leading to another heat sink alongside the memory. Plus, these overly large heat sinks on consumer motherboards are rather gaudy/tacky. A further point to add is that the CPU power connector should be located as close to the memory as possible...cables impede airflow, too.
- I'd be in favor of using a large number of power phases for greater efficiency (and power handling) instead of dissipating heat generated through heat sinks from less efficient components.
The small form factor with no extraneous components and relatively simplistic design should lead to reduced validation effort required, extra reliability, and lowered overall cost. This should more than offset the costs of the C610, I350, wireless card, and higher number of power phases.
I probably should have said the chipset was C61X, instead of C610, but you get the point. Now that I'm learning more about the DDR4 memory topology, yeah, 8 DIMMs would be awesome.
Skunk wrote:
I mocked up what a µATX board could look like:
I got tired at the end and didn't want to try to fill everything in. It's not that great of a pic, just a hack job, quick and dirty.
I took the concept of the daughter board and modified it. It isn't possible to use the ones on the Z87 and Z97 boards because of the memory, so I rotated it parallel to the board where it would be mounted on stand-offs and plugged down into the connector below (behind the USB connectors, here). That allows for full 7.1 and a line in while freeing up space on the board for other components. I did forget that a nice feature to have would be an audio-only HDMI (mini and micro work, too) for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA (plus a number of other formats coming, like Dolby Atmos, Auro3d, etc.)
I put the M.2 slots on top in slot positions 2 & 4. These would be PCI-e only (no SATA)...and remember that M.2 are intended to be full blown expansion cards, not just for storage. So, you therefore can place two slot PCI-e cards in each slot on the board, and then use the board space underneath them for additional expansion cards or storage, instead of having an unused slot.
There is also the M.2 slot that is vertically oriented (like on the X99-Deluxe) by the rear panel for the wireless card.
The heat sink over the VRMs should be no taller than the tops of the chokes right next to them...the heat pipe will move a lot of the heat to the side. This should keep a nice open airway for cooling to the processor.
Other than that, I think the rest is evident. Just what I think an ideal board could look like...
