ASUS currently has as many as eight motherboards based on the Intel X79 chipset in its product range. Of these, more than half belong to exclusive series such as TUF or ROG, and one intended exclusively for professional users. As a result, only three boards have been developed for ordinary users without any special complaints: P9X79, P9X79 Pro and P9X79 Deluxe. And although the names of the boards are similar, the PCB of the P9X79 is not at all the same as that of Pro boards and Deluxe. In particular, the principle of reasonable sufficiency was applied when designing it. As a result, this model turned out to be the simplest compared to the others, although the key characteristics of the chipset were not subject to any reductions. This board has three slots PCI Express x16 versus 5-6 on other models. Controllers - the required minimum: sound and network chip, FireWire and USB 3.0 controllers.

But the board supports full set ASUS proprietary technologies and system utilities, which, given high quality The implementation of these functions is one of the most important advantages of this product. In addition, we note that the board supports a full range of overclocking functions, and its power converters are in no way inferior to those in more expensive models. So you can hope for quite decent overclocking (however, more on that later) at a lower price. By the way, about the price - in April 2012, an average price of 8,000 rubles was asked for ASUS P9X79, which is a very good offer for products of this level.

⇡ Specification ASUS P9X79

At the top of the box with the board is a description of some proprietary technologies.

Through the transparent window, the buyer can see the board; the rest of the equipment is located under it:

In the box you can find the following:

• motherboard;
• user manual in English;
• DVD with software and drivers;
• four SerialATA cables;
• a set of additional connectors;
• plug on back panel housings;
• CrossFire bridge.

The principle of reasonable sufficiency was also used in the formation of the configuration. As a result, the user receives only a few SerialATA cables and one connecting bridge for two AMD video cards. We approve of the first point, since the remaining planks (with USB ports 2.0), cables and adapters can be bought in the store, but we completely disagree with the lack of bridges for NVIDIA SLI and 3-Way SLI technology.

As for the documentation, there are no complaints about it: traditionally for ASUS products, the user manual is as detailed and detailed as possible. Well implemented and software: The DVD contains a complete set of drivers, ASUS proprietary utilities and trial version antivirus. All listed software has the following installation shell:

Separately, we note the excellent installer of the multifunctional utility AI Suite II, in which the user can select all or individual components of the package.

⇡ ASUS P9X79 board

General configuration ASUS boards P9X79 can be called standard both in the location of the main components and in their number. In particular, the board has eight DIMM slots, which are divided into two groups and placed on both sides of the processor socket. Thus, there is only one place left for the power converter - to the right of the processor.

The number of PCI Express x16 slots is also “standard” - there are three of them. In this case, 16 bus lines are allocated to the first two slots, and only eight to the third.

In addition, the ASUS P9X79 has two PCI Express x1 slots (both lines are taken from the chipset) and one PCI slot. Interestingly, the latest generations of Intel chipsets lack native support PCI buses. However, it is retained in the X79 chipset. In our opinion, this is a consequence of the server origin of this platform.

A large number of DIMM slots, as well as the board’s support for two-, three- and four-channel access, can make it difficult to configure memory modules not only for a beginner, but also for an experienced user. Therefore, consultation with the user manual will be mandatory.

Note that the board supports DDR3-1066/1333/1600 memory (DDR3-1866/2133/2400 in overclocking mode), and the maximum memory capacity reaches 64 GB. And as soon as voltage is applied to the board, the large green LED located in the lower left corner of the board lights up.

As for the power connectors, they are installed very conveniently (a characteristic feature of ASUS motherboards): the main 24-pin connector is located on the bottom edge of the board, and the additional 8-pin connector is on the right edge.

A few words about the cooling system. The board has two heatsinks: on the main PWM and on the chipset. The user can connect five additional fans. The P9X79 has a total of six 4-pin fan headers, of which one is reserved for the CPU cooler.

⇡ Expansion options

The ASUS P9X79 board, thanks to the Intel X79 chipset, supports four SerialATA 3 Gb/s channels and two SerialATA 6 Gb/s channels. All ports are located near the chipset and oriented parallel to the plane of the board. At the same time, the 6 Gb/s ports are painted white, and the 3 Gb/s ports are blue.

In addition, the board has an additional ASMedia ASM1061 chip, which supports two SerialATA 6 Gb/s channels. Both corresponding ports are located on the rear panel.

As a result, the total number of connected drives has been increased to eight (four SerialATA 3 Gb/s and four SerialATA 6 Gb/s). The board also has 14 USB 2.0 ports: six are located on the rear panel, and the rest (eight) are connected using brackets (not included). In addition, the board supports USB bus 3.0 using two dual-port ASMedia ASM1042 controllers. All ports are located on the rear panel of the board.

There are two such chips installed on the board

Using the advanced operating modes of this controller, ASUS has developed USB 3.0 Boost technology, which increases throughput interface by 1.7 times.

In addition, the board supports another type of serial bus - IEEE1394 (FireWire). For this purpose, the ASUS P9X79 is equipped with a VT6315N controller manufactured by VIA. Despite the fact that this chip supports two FireWire ports, only one is implemented on the board (located on the rear panel). It’s hard to call this a serious drawback. — FireWire is losing relevance every day.

The ASUS P9X79 board supports eight-channel audio, and the ALC892 chip is used as a codec.

The board also has an Intel 82579V gigabit network controller. This chip is connected to a separate PCI Express bus line, and the corresponding connector (RJ-45) is located on the rear panel.

The resulting panel looks like this:

A special feature of the panel is the presence of a USB BIOS Flashback button, which launches the recovery function of the same name BIOS firmware. The user needs to write the firmware image to the flash drive (renaming it according to the user manual), insert the flash drive into the white USB port and start the board by holding down the button for three seconds. By the way, the difference between the white USB port and the others is that it is always supplied with standby voltage, which allows you to charge various devices from it. mobile devices even when the computer is turned off. And to charge Apple gadgets, the ASUS Ai Charger Windows utility is used.

Traditional board component diagram:

Among the additional functions, it is worth noting the MemOK button, which guarantees a successful start at safe memory settings in the event of overclocking the latter.

In addition, we note two dip switches, one of which activates the TPU (automatic processor overclocking) function, and the other - the EPU (energy saving) function.

⇡UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)

The P9X79 motherboard supports the UEFI interface with a very convenient graphical shell, which is already well known to our readers.

The main screen (photo above) contains the most important information about the operation of the system, and to fine-tune the parameters the user needs to switch to the “advanced” mode. Let's pay a little attention to the latter. For example, let's look at the memory section:

Setting the memory frequency is in the overclocking section,

as well as setting the processor multiplier:

Let's look at the section on system monitoring.

The board monitors the current processor and system temperatures, voltages on the main components and the speed of all six fans. In addition, the user can control the speed of the coolers using the Q-Fan 2 function.

Information from sensors can also be obtained using the AI ​​Suite II package,

and using the FanXpert function, the user can configure the operation of the fans in the optimal way:

The board supports the MyLogo 2 POST screen replacement function, as well as CrashFree BIOS 3, which allows you to restore a damaged BIOS using an image on a floppy disk, CD, or flash drive.

To update the BIOS firmware, you can use the built-in utility EZ Flash 2, which, thanks to its graphical interface, looks and works very nicely.

You can also use a similar utility from the AI ​​Suite:

It is worth paying attention to the small, but quite useful function instantly go to what you need BIOS section. By pressing the F3 key, the user is taken to the Shortcuts menu with a list of frequently used sections:

And finally, we note the traditional ASUS technology called OC Profile, which allows you to save everything BIOS settings in memory and load them if necessary. ASUS P9X79 board supports eight independent profiles:

⇡ Overclocking and stability

Before moving on to overclocking, let's look at the processor power converter. It has a 10-phase design (8+2) with five 270 µF capacitors and 12 560 µF capacitors.

By the way, the power converter for the memory subsystem is made according to a four-phase (2+2) circuit.

Let us immediately note that the AI ​​Suite II package has a new Digi+ VRM application, which allows the user to configure the operating mode of the power converter, depending on the type of intended load (naturally, with a certain “foolproofing”).

A similar function is called EPU and is designed to save energy:

Overclocking functions are concentrated in the AI ​​Tweaker section.

List of overclocking functions:

When overclocking the processor by increasing the multiplier, we reached a stable frequency of 4.4 GHz.

The board also has an automatic overclocking function - OC Tuner, which overclocks both by increasing the multiplier and increasing the Bclk frequency. On practice this function has two operating modes: “on” and “off”. And for our configuration, OC Tuner set the following combination of multiplier and Bclk.