EVGA X79 FTW X79 Motherboard Review

Much like previous boards from EVGA, the styling is very subtle but very effective. A black ATX sized PCB is at the heart of it, with black heatsinks and a mixture of black and red ports and components including the expansion bays and DIMM slots. The overall room around the board is quite spacious which allows for the main components to get the best possible airflow, especially if overclocking.

The spacious nature of this board is shown best around the CPU socket where their is ample room for some of the larger coolers on the market. The socket is surrounded by a black passive heatsink which assists the power delivery to the processor by keeping the PWM components cool.

Another cooling solution on the board includes the low-profile black aluminium heatsink covering the X79 chipset. What you will also find in the middle of this is a small box which opens up to reveal the removable BIOS chip which is a handy solution as most boards are hard-soldered to the PCB and involve RMA’ing the board if problems arise.

The final part of the passive puzzle of cooling on this board is between the expansion slots and CPU socket. This passive cooler includes the model name of the board and the blank panel that you can see lights up with a red “E” when turned on.

On the right side of the socket, we find two memory slots sporting the black colour scheme that matches the rest of the board.

On the left side of the socket, we find another two black memory slots. These with the other two slots support four DDR3 DIMM modules in quad-channel mode. The maximum capacity supported is 32GB in total with speeds up to 2133MHz+ with of course the ability for overclocking.

Moving over to the expansion slots, we find a large selection of PCI-Express lanes. There are five PCI-Express x16 size lanes with a single PCI-Express x1 slot in the midst of it all. From the top we find that all of the x16 slots are x16 capable, but due to limitations, a slot arrangement is made. If using a single card, you will get full x16 capabilities, and the same with two cards, if using three cards however, you’ll find that the bandwidth drops to x8 speeds, though we’ve found that the performance difference is negligible. Through use of these slots, you can utilise three Nvidia graphics cards in SLI mode with a fourth acting as a PhysX card. If AMD is your preference, you also have the choice of having three cards in AMD CrossFireX mode.

Moving slightly further down the board, we find all of our USB and front panel connectors. There is a total of four USB 2.0 headers, each supporting two USB ports per header and also a USB 3.0 native header included too. Just between these is a 1394 FireWire header and just to the right are the typical front panel headers for power buttons and LEDs.

Also included in the far right is a integrated speaker and BIOS selection switch which allows you to cycle through a whopping three different BIOS versions. Also present on the board is a debug LED for troubleshooting, especially if you are an advanced user. With enthusiasts, much like ourselves, we find debug LEDs and internal speakers to be a godsend when overclocking and tweaking with a systems performance. Also located near to this is a MOLEX 4-pin connector for use with multiple GPU configurations.

Storage wise, the board has a total of six SATA ports, the four black ports are SATA II 3.0Gb/s and are controlled via the X79 chipset. The two red SATA ports are SATA III 6.0Gb/s and are also controlled via the X79 chipset. RAID support includes RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD.

The ATX 24-pin power connector has been rotated to allow for better cable management, thus leaving your system clean and tidy.

At the top of the board are two 8-pin motherboard power connectors to provide sufficient power to the CPU socket and memory slots. By having two 8-pin power connectors, it should open up further overclocking abilities which we will find out how this board copes with later on.

At the top right of the board we find a reset and power button which is especially handy for overclockers and system builders as it provides easy access to your system, especially when tweaking with the BIOS. If you manage to push things a bit to far, you’ll find the reset CMOS button which is also present a handy little feature.

Moving around the rear of the board, we take a look at the rear I/O which is certainly colourful. From left to right we find a Bluetooth module, and two USB 2.0 ports. Just to the right of this is another reset CMOS button and a header which works in conjunction with the EVGA EVBot which more information can be found on the EVGA website here. Moving on, we can see a PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port, two USB 3.0 ports, another USB 3.0 ports with two eSATA 3.0Gb/s ports just underneath controlled by the Marvell 6121 controller. There are a further four USB 3.0 ports with two Gigabit Ethernet ports above it and for audio devices, we find 8-channel High Definition analog and optical SPDIF audio ports.