The Intel Haswell-E X99 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASRock and MSI

Box Contents and What to Expect

Over the years of reviewing motherboards, it is clear that the price of the overall package is a good indicator of what is inside the box. The cheaper motherboards below $100 rarely come with more than a couple of SATA cables, whereas the most expensive $500 comes with external goodies, like the Rampage IV Black Edition with the included OC Panel. Motherboard manufacturers often have a choice – strip the goodies out to make the product hit a lower price point, or invest in the end-user having an experience with the product as long as the extras make sense.

With X99, almost all the motherboards are in the high end category because X99 itself is a premium product, so we expect to see more than just SATA cables here. One of the common features with the gaming motherboards will be addition of licenses for gaming related software such as XSplit or even bundled games for certain regions.

ASUS X99-Deluxe In The Box

Due to the X99-Deluxe price point around $400, as well as the extra features like the vertical M.2 and Hyper x4 M.2, we get a fair amount of stuff:

Driver Disk
Manuals
Quick Installation Guide
Rear IO Shield
Vertical M.2 Brace and clips
Hyper M.2 x4 PCIe card
Wi-Fi Antenna for 3T3R
Fan Extension Card with adhesive
Two-pin Thermistor
3-Way SLI Flexible Connector
8 SATA Cables

In the past, ASUS has added extras into the box where they were not ultimately necessary – this time each addition is required to make something already on the motherboard to work. ASUS is still hedging its bets between SATA Express and M.2 however, with the vertical M.2 required to get extra functionality out of the limited PCB space.

GIGABYTE X99-UD7 WiFi In The Box

At around $310, the UD7 is just below the ASRock X99 WS in price but sits quite nicely in the middle of the X99 range between the super-high end and the low end of the spectrum. At certain points in the past GIGABYTE has given the user a reduced level of box extras in order to drive the price point of a motherboard down into another category, but that might not be so much of an issue here.

In the box we get:

Driver Disk
Manual
Rear IO Shield with LED Lighting
Flexi 2-way SLI Bridge
Short 3-way SLI Bridge
Long 3-way SLI Bridge
4-way SLI Bridge
Flexi 2-way Crossfire Bridge
WiFi Antenna
1 to 3 ATX 12V power cable
Six Sleeved SATA Cables

There is a healthy amount of SLI cables, including a long individual ones for three-way SLI with both 28 and 40 PCIe lanes CPUs. Adding the Crossfire bridge is a nice touch, as this seems to fly under everyone’s radar. Aside from the flashy IO shield and the antenna, one element stands out more than others: sleeved SATA cables!

This needs to be a thing in all motherboard boxes today. Even if it costs an extra $0.50 per motherboard for six cables (because manufacturers buy in bulk) I would certainly give this the thumbs up.

ASRock X99 WS In The Box

In our previous consumer oriented WS motherboard reviews, these types of motherboards are filled with SATA cables and SLI bridges to support multiple NVIDIA cards for compute. Workstation users might also require other connections from the COM or LPT adapters, depending on their use, although the ASRock X99 WS eschews those here in favor of its own HDD Saver cable.

In the box we get:

Driver Disk
Rear IO Panel
Manual
HDD Saver Cable for two SATA devices
Four SATA Cables
2-slot, 3-slot and 4-slot SLI bridges

ASRock is often generous with SATA cables, and previous levels of box contents have gone above and beyond the expected price point. At $324 this box bundle represents almost a bare minimum, and I would have expected a couple more SATA cables at least.

MSI X99S SLI Plus In The Box

Being the cheapest motherboard of the ones tested today, we would hazard a guess and say that it would be coming with the least kit included. $230 is in the middle to mid-high range for Z97 motherboards and might come with an extra free thing or two, but $230 is almost bottom of the pile for X99 and will most likely be treated as such. In the box we get the following:

Driver Disk
Manual
Rear IO Shield
Flexi SLI Bridge
Six SATA Cables

This is somewhat interesting. We have two more SATA cables than the ASRock motherboard, but it is odd that the X99S SLI Plus is designed around three-way GPU setups but we only get one SLI bridge in there. I would have assumed that users would be more interested in a three-way SLI Bridge than more SATA cables. However, because three-way SLI needs a strange way to connect them all, the extra cost of those cables might be prohibitive. Users will have to find SLI cables elsewhere for more than a 2-way graphics setup.