ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth (LGA 2011-3) Motherboard Review

Rikki Wright / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The ASUS TUF X99 SABERTOOTH is currently a Pre-order item, available in the UK from OverclockersUK for £299.99 and available in the US from Newegg for $329.99. This motherboard will be protected under ASUS’s extended warranty of 5 years which really shows the confidence in the quality of the components featured on this board.

Summary

Now for my round-up. I’ve loved tinkering with the TUF X99 SABERTOOTH, all the little add-on and accessories are just something I love to fit, possible OCD coming out in me. The looks of the board are simply unique, which is what I guess ASUS set out to do with this, capture a niche part of the market. It offers top durability with amazing built-in cooling functions which is not matched across the market; yes other manufacturers equip their motherboards with fan control and basic temperature sensors, but this motherboard blows all that out of the water. The fact that ASUS equipped two LAN ports on this board is awesome, allowing you to hook up to two different internet sources to get the best speeds, while also getting amazing speeds. The price is a little scary, £299.99 for a motherboard may seem steep, but that includes one of the toughest motherboard designs in the industry and a 5-year warranty; that works out to £60 a year.

The performance was excellent and also average, the X99 series motherboards are too free-flowing to be a hindrance on the components. It topped some of the charts, but then it was at the bottom of others; however there was less than 10% difference in the scores. This can only be a good thing, it opens the door to enthusiasts to overclock their CPU’s with little resistance from the motherboard, along with that they can also overclock the GPU and RAM in a similar way. This will open up a whole new world of performance for general users and overclockers alike. The networking speeds seen in the testing were some of the best I’ve seen; they are now starting to push the Gigabit LAN to a new level which may introduce a new standard soon.

ASUS has bundled in some of their own software, most notable is the AI-suite. Now on its third revision, it has been moulded into something I would actually recommend installing. It gives you a one-stop-shop for everything relevant to the hardware from fan control to power adjustment settings. Along with these features, the TUF series has its own addition called ThermalRadar. This bit of software gives you a more in-depth look in to the health of the components, keeping you informed about temperatures and power levels to ensure you get the best out of your components.

This motherboard is expensive, but the time and effort that has gone into picking out the components and testing every section of the motherboard and software has really shone through, I haven’t found a single issue.

Pros