Prime X299-A Motherboard Review, An Affordable Luxurious Motherboard

Prime X299-A Motherboard Review - All right, okay, so yes, as you can see, my ears are slowly invading the rest of my face, or I had a haircut so first, I wanted to thank everybody who wished me a happy birthday yesterday cause. Indeed, it was my birthday and, as many of you may already know, I just turned 25 and, as expected, I feel very young. 

So without any further ado, let's jump right in a couple months ago, Intel released its new x-series processors and with it the new X, 299 chipset, which goes along and, of course, paces went ahead and released 5 X, 299 motherboards, and today I had the pleasure to Review the prime X 299 A the entry-level of those 5 motherboards. Now I know what you're thinking an entry-level. Is it any good?

Well, do not worry one bit. This thing is packed with yumminess. I should just take it down a notch shouldn't I so here we have a motherboard in it: static bag. We'Re going to put this aside for now. So here we have.

Our M.2 Solid State Drive vertical mount our i/o shield, our sli bridge our front panel Bridge connector, our M.2 solid state, drive screw and raiser a couple of SATA cables, our drivers, a quick start guide and our manual not much on the accessory side. But let's take a closer look to the motherboard first in line the CPU socket. This is a 2066 pin CPU socket, and that replaces the older 2011 version 3 that we had it's good and bad news.

The bad news is, you cannot use 2011 compliant CPUs, so exit with the Broadwell fee and everything before that. This is not backward-compatible. The only thing we can use with this motherboard are the new x-series CPUs. On the up side. We have 55 more pins, and that means a greater bandwidth transfer between the CPU and the motherboard and the lower voltage per core.

That'S very cool ram, wise, as you can tell. We have a quad channel configuration, but it's not that simple, depending on the type of processor you're going to use, you will be able to activate the four channels or only two. 

Yes, you heard that right. If you take any quad-core processors, you will be stuck with a dual channel: configuration running up to 64 gigabytes of ddr4 ram up to 4133 megahertz. But if you run any other x-class cpus, then it will unlock the two remaining channels and you'll be able to run up to 128 gigabytes of ddr4 Ram, also talkable up to 4,133 megahertz.

In a nutshell, what makes the extra 99 chipset are not great compared to the older x99 chipset is its bandwidth. The x99 will only have a pci lanes. Second generations and our new x299 has an impressive 24 third generation, PCI Express Lanes and that's about four and a half to five times more bandwidth for gaming and entertainment. 

Later on a motherboard that translates in greater speed and more bus availability on our PCI Express Lanes. As you can tell, we have six of them 3/16 slots to four slots and one single slot in this particular case.

If you're running a single GPU, it doesn't matter if you put it on the first or the second PCI Express they can both run up to 16 speed. If you have two GPU, you can run both GPUs in an SLI or crossfire configuration individually running out of full 16 bus speed, but it doesn't stop there. This motherboard can take 3-way, SLI or crossfire configuration. 

So if you had a third GPU, then you could put it in the last 16 slot PCI Express - and in this case you would have a 16 by 16 by 8 bus speed, which is extremely impressive. Alright, let's take a look at our storage add-on.

Any good motherboard you'll have eight third generation SATA plugs, which can all individually transfer up to six gigabit of data, but where things get really interesting is because we have so many more PCI lines to play with. 

We can have two MDOT sorry to drive running individually up to four bus speed. One will find itself in a vertical position and the other one in an original position, as in Z, 270 chipset motherboards, so X, 299 chipset comes obtain ready, and that means that our m dot, o solid-state drive, can transfer data up to an astonishing 32 gigabits per. Second well, in principle at least another evolution on the other side of our chipset heat shield. We have m dot, so sorry set your thermal pad.

This should really help us, keep the Stickle cooler than usual and allow it to reach those 30-plus gigabit per second. So pretty neat time to take a closer look to our peripherals. So, starting from the left, we have our BIOS button. A couple of second generation USB plugs a Gigabit Ethernet for third generation USB plugs one type, A and one type C: 3.1 10 gigabit graded USB plugs our v audio channel and finally, an optical audio port.

But that's not all. There is a couple of really cool features which usually are reserved for more expensive board, which are here I'll start with a culet screen. So, as you know, I am a big fan of Q LED screen simply because they do simplify our lives. They will allow you to easily troubleshoot your computer with the Q codes and monitor the current temperature of your CPU. Next to it, you have a soldered power button right on your board, and this is what really makes this motherboard and 2zs graded multi-port again.

It makes it easier to install easier to test and easier to troubleshoot next on our list, the polarizing effect, if you've watched any of my reviews, you'll know that I'm a big fan of it in a nutshell, or I will sync all the different RGB s on The components in your build to glow in an Arminius way, so it looks really really cool if you actually care on how cool you build, will look like that anyway.

You get my point so on this particular case, we have an RGB strip it in here, and Here and if that's not enough, we also add to our TP connectors on each extremity of our board here and we're a last thing. I'D like to show you is this little connector right here. 

This is a second-generation USB 3.1 front panel connector and that's really cool, because I will give you 10 gigabit per second transfer, which is as much at the thunderbolt 3.0 or the type a and type C web on a peripheral and that again something that I was not expecting to see. On an entry-level board all right, so I think I covered most of the technical aspect of this board, but I kept the best for the end.

The price the asus prime X $ 2.99, a costs about two hundred and ten US dollars, and I'll say this for one: it feels absolutely solid. This is a durable motherboard. It'S not something cheap. You can run a 3 Way GPU on this.

You can have 16 by 16 by 8. I mean you're, talking about serious performances. Of course, you'll have to choose a right CPU to give you enough PCI lanes to do the 3 Way GPU configurations, but you know motherboard wise. 

You can get any better than this. Not for $ 210 and that's why, for the very first time on my channel power card - and this is why, for the very first time on my channel, I have decided to give it the Lauren's Choice.

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