ASUS PRIME X299-DELUXE Motherboard Review

ASUS's PRIME X299-DELUXE is the part of Asus X299 motherboard series and one of the most expensive to buy at this point. But ASUS's Deluxe lineup of motherboards are best in terms of features and quality. At first sight, new Prime X299 Deluxe looks like follow the same footsteps of its predecessors, and we will see today in this review.

Packaging and Overview

The Motherboard box includes following things:

• User's manual
• ASUS Q-Shield
• 1 x Vertical M.2 bracket set
• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
• 1 x M.2 Screw Package
• 1 x Supporting DVD
• 1 x ASUS WiGig 802.11ad moving antenna *7
• 1 x ASUS 2T2R dual band Wi-Fi moving antennas (Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compliant)
• 1 x Fan Extension Card (3 x 4-pin fan out)
• 1 x Fan Extension card screw pack
• 1 x ThunderboltEX 3
• 1 x mini DisplayPort Cable
• 1 x ThunderboltEX 3 GPIO cable
• 1 x 3-Way SLI bridge(s)
• 1 x SLI HB BRIDGE(2-WAY-M)
• 1 x Q-Connector
• 3 x Thermistor cable(s)

The Asus  Prime X299 Delux is an ATX motherboard with all features you would like to expect for your a gaming machine. This summer Intel has launched it’s “Skylake-X” and “Kaby Lake-X” processors under their new Core X-Series. And the big Motherboard giant Asus already in the market with several new boards features the Intel X299 chipset required to run a Core X-Series CPU.  The Asus  Prime X299 Delux is one of those and available online at INR 39,000.

ASUS offers a standard sized ATX board with the Prime X299-Deluxe, it can support three-way graphics configurations from NVIDIA or AMD with the PCIe slots having SafeSlot.  There are no SATA Express slots however you will find a U.2 port for enterprise-grade SSDs.The main slot is hidden under the chipset heatsink, which ASUS says reduces drive temperatures.

The motherboard includes all of the standardized X299 enhancements with two M.2 SSD slots and will support SLI and Crossfire (3-way). Your PCIe lane configuration will be highly dependant on the processor you purchase, unfortunately.

• 44-Lane CPU-
  • 3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16, x16/x16, x16/x16/x8)
  • 1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode)
• 28-Lane CPU-
  • 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16, x16/x8)
  • 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode)
• 16-Lane CPU-
  • 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)
  • 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x2 mode)
  • 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1 (x1 mode)

The board gets two 10/100/1000 Ethernet controller from Intel I219-V. There is no PS/2 combo port that can be used for either a keyboard or mouse.

• 2 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Type-A)
• 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (USB Type-CTM)
• 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1
• 4 x USB 2.0 (one port can be switched to USB BIOS Flashback)
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
• 5 x Audio jack(s)
• 1 x USB BIOS Flashback Button(s)
• 1 x ASUS Wi-Fi GO! module (Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac+ WiGig 802.11ad and Bluetooth v4.1)

The memory DIMM slots, the board supports single, dual and quad channel with support up-to DDR4 4000 (O.C.) and starts at 2133 MHz memory modules. 8 x DDR4 DIMM sockets can support up to 128 GB of system memory with Skylake-X processors.

The Bios interface of Prime X-299 is very impressive and intuitive. From basic task to advance level overclocking of RAM and CPU can be done easily. Also, it shows all info about the cooling fans and motherboard temperature.

CPU-Z Screenshots

Perfromance:

It has been designed excellently and everything is kept in a clean manner. We added Intel Core i7-7900X, AMD Radeon R7 GPU, 8 GB of Zion DDR4 RAM and Seagate 2 TB of Hard Drive and installed Windows 10 OS. To check its capability, we used three benchmarks as well as some real-life tests. During our three weeks continues the test, we found this motherboard a smart choice as it comes with loads of features as well as has an inbuilt capability to optimize PC performance.

We played some high graphics intensive games, like Shadow of Mordor, and there was no lag in the performance. While running the game, we run few other applications such as MS-office, Chrome, and Mozilla browsers, having 10 tabs in each. It handled them efficiently, without any performance lag.