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ASUS, EVGA release new X99 micro-ATX motherboards

By Koh Wanzi - on 3 Aug 2015, 12:01pm

ASUS, EVGA release new X99 micro-ATX motherboards

ASUS says that the X99M-WS is the world's most powerful micro-ATX board. (Image Source: ASUS)

Intel X99 motherboards are usually associated with full-sized ATX and E-ATX offerings that feature up to four PCIe 3.0 lanes for quad-GPU setups. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily the case, and many motherboard manufacturers have taken to squeezing the features into compact boards, perhaps to cater to the demand for small form factor PCs.

The ASUS X99-M WS is a micro-ATX workstation board with fairly rich set of features. It supports an LGA2011-3 socket CPU and has four DDR4 memory slots. In addition to Haswell-E processors, it will also support Xeon E5-2600/1600 v3 processors. The board uses an eight-phase VRM for the CPU, and an additional 2+2 phase VRM for memory.

Unlike the ASRock X99E-ITX/ac mini-ITX motherboard which has just a single PCIe 3.0 x16, this micro-ATX board has three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. You'll enjoy a full 16 lanes of bandwidth on each slot if you run just two graphics cards. The third slot is a physical x16 slot, but it’s electrically wired to only 8 lanes.

If you opt for a triple-GPU setup, they’ll run in x16/x8/x8 mode with a 40-lane CPU. Of course, we find it unlikely that users will go this route as the space between the second and third PCIe 3.0 slot spans the width of just one slot.

Image Source: ASUS

There are eight SATA 6Gbps ports on the board, and it features a single M.2 32Gbps slot. As expected of a workstation board, it has dual Gigabit Ethernet, support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0. It’s notably lacking any Type-C USB ports, although users probably won’t miss it given that we’re still waiting for more widespread support for the new connector. However, it does have two USB 3.1 Type A ports.

On EVGA’s end, the X99 Micro2 is actually a refresh of the X99 Micro. The updated board now features USB 3.1 and USB Type-C ports, a move on EVGA’s part to ensure the board stays relevant going forward. It retains the same six-phase VRM design on the X99 Micro.

Image Source: EVGA

Like the ASUS X99M-WS, the X99 Micro2 has three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. It layout is similar to the ASUS board, so most users are also probably going to run two graphics card at the most.

In addition, the board has a total of 10 SATA 6Gbps ports and a single M.2 32Gbps. That’s two more SATA ports than the ASUS X99M-WS, if you’re particular about storage connectivity options.

Other features include an eight-layer PCB for better overclocking stability and isolated audio controller traces for cleaner sound.

The ASUS X99M-WS retails at US$279.99, while the EVGA X99 Micro2 is slightly cheaper at US$229.99.

Source: TechPowerUp, EVGA via Tom’s Hardware (1), (2)

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