The ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth Review

by Ian Cutress on 7/22/2015 10:00 AM EST
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  • Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    lol it even has dust caps for the microphone port.
  • Stuka87 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Really a nice looking board. I like the PCI-E covers one slots you may not be using.

    Out of curiosity, why are you guys still testing with Windows 7 rather than 8.1? Will you guys be moving to Windows 10 soon?
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    As soon as it's commercially available and all benchmark software has been tested to make sure that they still work I hope. :-)
  • Souka - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    What about Windows 8.1?
  • abrowne1993 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    "It didn’t detect the DDR3 on the graphics card correctly though!"

    GDDR5?
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    The R7 240 is a DDR3 card.
  • Achaios - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    @Staff: There is a rather huge issue with ASUS X99 motherboards destroying CPU's (5960X's, 5820k's, etc). Google "5960X Dead overclock.net".

    To my understanding, there is a chance that the ASUS X99 motherboard will raise on its own the CPU Vcore of the CPU to around 1.85V which, as we have learned, kills CPUs in a matter of seconds.

    The latest incident reported was 4.5 hours ago. ASUS has refused to comment or acknowledge the issue. So, in view of the above, I would not buy an ASUS X99.
  • Achaios - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Correction: Latest incident reported 2 days and 8 hours ago on a "RVE", i.e. Rampage V Extreme X99. According to the person writing the report, he did try to RMA the board but

    QUOTE "ASUS were just dismissive and very unfriendly and said no".

    Treating enthusiasts like dogs really angers me.
  • Gothmoth - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    lol.... "enthusiast" who probably killed their system because they have no clue how to overclock.
    now they claim it´s a board problem. of course all x99 asus boards are affected.

    i have SIX asus X99 boards and they run flawless for years.

    an where is the source for the "incident" you reported?

    without giving a source this is even more likr UFO sightings.....
  • Achaios - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    http://www.overclock.net/t/1561131/5960x-dead
  • s0urce - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    View that users post history, clearly a novice OCer. Shit can happen when you OC, especially when you're using the jumper setting to allow such high voltage (which he used, and is not necessary). I'm running the x99 Sabertooth without a hitch. Great board, there will always be noobs.
  • Achaios - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    If you had bothered to read the thread you'd realize that several different people had their CPUs destroyed by an ASUS X99 motherboard, including -but not limited to- Poster "66racer" an overclock.net Moderator and longtime overclocker.

    I believe that around 10 different people have had their CPUs destroyed by an ASUS X99 motherboard in that thread alone and dozens more in other forums all over the internet.
  • sonny73n - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    "novice OCer" hmm... Nowhere on ASUS website or any MB manufacturer's site that I can see their MBs with OCing capabilities are built only for professional OCers and you were once also a noob.

    OCing is about trials and failures, often ends in frustration, to where you get that sweet spot between performance and temp with stability. MB makers should make sure it'll be safe for OCers to try new settings without frying other components.

    I'm wondering why ASUS even have jumpers for CPU voltage increment while they have DIGI VRM (Digital Voltage Regulator Module) which can be controlled via software? And why would they allow such extreme voltage pumps into the CPU on this board which is 1.825v?

    Despite some flaw and if money isn't a factor, I would still prefer ASUS's over any other MB.
  • Makaveli - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    The x99 chipset hasn't even been out a year.

    "i have SIX asus X99 boards and they run flawless for years"

    do you have a time machine?
  • sonny73n - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Haha... Good one.
  • sonny73n - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    "i have SIX asus X99 boards and they run flawless for years."
    What a big fat lie! Lol

    Since 2002 I've only built systems with Intel CPUs so I can't speak for AMD's. As far as I know, it's nearly impossible to kill modern Intel CPUs by overclocking, even for an amateur, because Intel have excellent safety measures for their CPUs. Sometimes the system won't even boot if you had some crazy settings, unless there's a design flaw with the motherboard. Moreover, Asus have their Ai overclock settings in most of their MBs and some overclockers probably tried that with too high of settings and fried their CPUs.

    I'm an addict when it comes to overclocking and I think "easy" or "1-click" overclocks that come with the BIOS for general CPUs aren't good enough. Especially when it automatically provides the voltage it thinks necessary for the CPU frequency I set. Nevertheless, CPU should not be fried when AI OC settings is used, regardless how ridiculous the settings are, because after all, the MB manufacturers are the ones who put those settings in there, they should have safety measures and they're also the ones who designed voltage regulations for the CPUs. So, when an OCer fries the CPU with MB settings, it's clearly the MB fault.
  • extide - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Uhh you can EASILY fry a chip with too much voltage.
  • tabascosauz - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    AI Tweaker is pretty questionable. A friend had a 3570K on a stock cooler; AI Tweaker applied some pretty high voltages to achieve 4.2GHz, and by the time he reported it to me his 3570K was in the deep fryer nearing 100°C and his VRMs were burning up (he had an LE board so only half the MOSFETs had a heatsink). I wouldn't trust Asus' OC software with any of my CPUs.
  • tabascosauz - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Also, once you get far enough past 1.5V, it can be an insta kill for any Haswell CPU.
  • sonny73n - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    No one can apply 110V to the CPU via the MB, can't they? What I'm saying is MB manufacturers should always consider Intel specs and limit OCing voltages in their softwares. Just leave the rest for the CPU which will throttle or shut down when temp hits around 100C (95 to 105C). That's pretty safe bet to me.
  • OldCOP - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link

    that would also kill real advances in overclocking theory. Overclocking is not for someone who does not know what he is doing. If you must rely on "built in protection" you don't need to be overclocking.
  • OldCOP - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link

    It's the guns fault, not the NOOB that pulled the trigger ! Right? People need to take responsibility for what THEY do and stop blaming the manufacturer.
  • Stuka87 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    He said how to get to the source (but has since now posted it).

    I find it pretty awesome that you were running X99 boards before they even started development on them.
  • superflex - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    ASUS sockpuppet in the House!
    Six X99 boards operating for years?
    LMFAO.
    Does ASUS pay you in Hot Pockets?
  • bigboxes - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    It was pretty funny. SIX Asus X99 boards. LOL
  • Gothmoth - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    6 boards working since late 2014 make ~5 years of use.
  • Desired Username #3 - Sunday, January 17, 2016 - link

    Literally how? Are you adding up the time that you've owned the boards?
  • Gothmoth - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    well m*r*n...im a 3d freelancer doing jobs for architects.
    you ever heard about renderfarms?
    distributed renderings? no.. well then get a clue.

    so yes i need six x99 boards because i need lots of memory for my 3d scenes.
    all boatds are equipped with 64gb of memory... ist how i earn my living.

    not that a boy like you, who lives in his parents basement, would know anything about work or having a job.

    so keep on wanking....
  • Ryangadz - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    Have you looked into a GPU setup to do renderings? I know 3d studio max does it maybe Maya too. Workflow into those programs might not be ideal for your process but it could certainly save you a lot of time and money.

    I've always run dual CPU setups since 2002 for this reason but a GPU can be several times faster than even a dual Xeon for global illumination and raytracing.
  • itsallgoode9 - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link

    GPU renderers generally aren't as fast as you'd think for interior renderings. Many other things, they are blazing fast (products, vehicles etc) but generally not interiors.

    I do product renderings for a living using Maya with Octane Render (GPU) and they work super fast for that. I was playing around with some interior rendering the other day and holy cow the speed drop from my product renders is substantial.

    All my render programs are unbiased though, so if there's a biased gpu program out there, it might work much faster but then you're losing a lot of photo realism using biased.
  • Ryangadz - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link

    Also, the work being done in architectual renderings within gaming engines is super impressive. If you aren't familiar with Unreal Engine 4's lighting system its definitely worth looking into. I don't do much in the way of rendering stills anymore because interactive is so much more useful to clients and consumers. Client want to add 10 more desks to an office? Not a problem just move the wall and (even procedurally) drop in more desks all with real-time lighting. Its getting to the point where even I have trouble discerning real v. Baked GI v. Real-time faked GI. Do you think the client can tell... Or even cares?
  • OldCOP - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link

    A dyslexic renderest, how interesting
  • isamudysan - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link

    HAHAHAHAHA!!!! 6 x99 boards for years?!!! didn't know x99s were made years ago; and, where's your proof of these 6 x99s that has been running flawlessly for years?

    "without giving a source this is even more likr UFO sightings....."

    LOL
  • Pinhead* - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link

    I agree! I built with three Asus X99 Deluxe board in the past year and they are all running beautifully. Someone is overclocking and blaming their mistakes erroneously on the boards...
  • MeeDeeGee - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link

    I've been running two ASUS X99 boards for years. Never had a problem and the boards are awesome. ASUS ROG X99 Strix with an i7-6950X 10-Core and ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth with an i7-6800K. Excellent quality and reliability.
    I read the posts that you linked and the guys are idiots, they were overclocking, so it serves them right to fry things. I never overclock because it is a waste of time (yeah like you really will notice that extra 2% more benchmark numbers in real world applications). Plus it voids your warranty, and wears out your components faster. Serves them right. There is nothing wrong with the ASUS X99.
  • Zinc64 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Didn't bother checking the TUF Detective app?

    Seems like a neat tool for anyone with a tablet lying around...
  • LordanSS - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    I hope someday be able to get one of these for a future build... whatever comes after Skylake maybe? Who knows.

    Most of my issues are not from dust gathering inside (dust filters + positive pressure alleviates most of that problem) but humidity instead.

    It's quite difficult for one of my systems to live through 2 years. My Ivy Bridge i7 proc will complete 3 years in a few months, but I already had to replace the motherboard (was an Asus P8Z77-V) a couple months ago. Sadly, Brazil doesn't get the nice warranty periods and RMA possibilities that US customers have. We do get very high humidity tho! =/
  • ericloewe - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Realtek 8111 as the second GbE controller? What the hell were they thinking?!
  • lmcd - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    That's as the first GbE controller ;) Likely bundled with the RealTek 1150 solution.
  • steve4king - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    The "Thermal" armor concerns me as it seems like it would be more of an insulator than anything. Unless there ducting to force air under the plastic, it will just block airflow to the motherboard's smaller components.
  • sonny73n - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    Purely aesthetic. It's not good for heat dissipation and it can't block fine dust either.
  • s0urce - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    The board includes a fan to move air underneath the armor, not needed but as an option.
  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    "In this orientation, the drive can be booted from, but the OS has to be installed via a UEFI install. This means there has to be the appropriate boot profile in the OS, which most modern versions of Windows have (though my Windows 7 SP1 install did not)."

    Can you elaborate? Windows 7 supports UEFI. What specifically is Windows 7 lacking that prevented it from working?
  • evilspoons - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    I think you have to install Windows 7 in UEFI or in "traditional" mode, it can't switch back and forth. They probably have some sort of base image they're working off of with all their test tools and that test image goes to MBR/BIOS/whatever it's called mode.

    I had that kind of problem with my Z868-V PRO, it can technically boot Win7 in UEFI or BIOS mode, but it doesn't provide a nice way to specify which and the Win7 installer gets confused. This lead to me being unable to use a full-disc image backup created by Win7.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    I guess that depends on how it is imaged. The standard Windows installer uses a WIM image and that can install the image as either BIOS or UEFI depending on which bootloader was used. If they're using the Windows AIK to build and apply the image I'd expect it to work in the same way.
  • althaz - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Why do so few motherboard manufacturers care about POST times. I'm nearly ready for an upgrade. My PC currently posts then loads windows in ~6 seconds (Windows 8.1, haven't tested it since switching to Win 10). If it blows out to 10 seconds...I guess I could deal with that. Any longer and I am *not* interested.

    For those that care I have an Intel board with quick-boot enabled and Asus' XXX-Deluxe motherboards are also usually quick as hell (but have to be configured to POST quickly, out of the box they are sloooowwww).
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    Quite a few care, and Asus is one of them. The problem is that lots of extra controllers plus the X99 platform itself doesn't lend well to low POST times.
  • DanNeely - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    X99 boards are also hindered in that they have more hardware (28/40 PCIe lanes vs 16, 4 dram controllers vs 2) that needs initialized at startup.
  • khanikun - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link

    Probably cause no one really cares all that much. Most enthusiasts probably only reboot once a month, if not longer between gaps.

    I had a machine that took over 2 minutes to even start attempting to boot Windows. It had to go through 3 raid controllers and had staggered hdd spin up.
  • gammaray - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    i got an i7 4770k with a Z87 mobo, why would i need a x99 board? i still don't get it.
  • Ryangadz - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link

    X79 and x99 are more geared for workstations with more ram and larger CPUs for multithreading. You're right they are not going to give you much extra performance for games...if any. Until DX12 fully kicks in a CPU with higher clock speed is best.
  • dog55 - Saturday, July 25, 2015 - link

    I dont if all M2.PCI ssd card suffer from heat throttling but the samsungs do (951).

    So I was wondering if you could comment on the covered slot for the drive- does it cool?
  • Zertzable - Saturday, July 25, 2015 - link

    I recently had to RMA my X58 Sabertooth, needless to say I was quite happy about the five year warranty. That board and the i7-980X are definitely the best investment I've ever made in a PC, five years down the line and I still have basically no reason to upgrade. Fun fact: not that I care, but this "dinosaur" doesn't even have USB 3!
  • mpdugas - Sunday, July 26, 2015 - link

    Curiously, my Sabertooth Gen3/Rev 2 for 990FX only lasted two years before (first) the sound sub-system and then (second) the IDE controller chip-set failed, taking with it two IDE drives (a data drive and a backup data drive).

    Not very impressive for a "reliable" product, and my first MB failure in 20 years of building my own PCs.
  • iamkyle - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link

    What do you expect? There is no actual validation for this being a "durable" product, just marketing fluff to move units.
  • martfine - Sunday, January 3, 2016 - link

    Hi - your specs say ddr4 Ram speed up to 2400MHz but Asus indicated 3200MHz .... Or am I missing something??
  • Friksie - Friday, September 4, 2020 - link

    Ook ik had het pech dat de CPU Intel 6850K kapot ging en helaas buiten de garantie (3 Jaar) viel dus die zijn vrij duur.
    Maar ik weet niet of dit al iemand heeft doorgegeven dat het ook door de waterkoeling kan stuk gaan! na veel zoeken kwam ik erachter dat de pomp van de Fraktal 24 S niet meer draaide en dat zie je nergens want alles functioneerde n.l. normaal.
    Ook die viel net buiten de 3 jarige (alleen de TUF versie) garantie van Fractal design.
    Eerst denk je dat het aan het moederbord ligt want alles draait alleen het start niet meer op en nu maar zoeken.
    Je kunt met de TUF via een Mobile software de problemen opsporen maar wie heeft dat allemaal!
    Door een andere CPU te testen kwam ik erachter dat het daaraan moest liggen de CPU was dus doordat de pomp niet draaide en dus niet meer koelde oververhit geraakt en boem stuk ging.
    Dus wees gewaarschuwd kijk af en toe de waterkoeling goed na.

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