Conclusion

...the X99E-ITX/ac is a surprisingly solid little board that, should you wish, can run an 18-core, 36-thread Xeon without issue.

With the X99E-ITX/ac board ASRock has gone out to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Shoehorning the large, powerful X99 platform into a Mini-ITX form factor isn't high on most motherboard manufacturers' priority lists, but in keeping with recent tradition, the R+D team at ASRock has found a way to do the near-impossible.

Barely suffering from a lack of memory bandwidth introduced by having only two DIMM channels, the X99E-ITX/ac is a surprisingly solid little board that, should you wish, can run an 18-core, 36-thread Xeon without issue.

M.2, SATA Express, 802.11ac WiFi, and USB 3.1 are all catered for, while the BIOS is solid and fan control decent. Budget permitting, a Mini-ITX system can now house an Intel Core i7-5960X CPU, Titan X GPU, 16GB of RAM and a super-speed M.2 drive along with other ancillary goodness.

There are undeniable shortcomings when designing for a tiny form factor, with noise being the biggest issue, but for many of our readership that want power in a small, LAN-friendly package the ASRock X99E-ITX/ac is rather tough to beat.

The Good		The Bad
Good feature set Form factor works well Very solid performance Above average BIOS		Supplied CPU fan can get noisy

ASRock X99E-ITX/ac

HEXUS Where2Buy*

The ASRock X99E-ITX/ac motherboard is available from Scan Computers.*

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

Any chance of an image of the underside of the board? I'm wondering how densely packed the underside is considering how much ASRock have managed to cram on top.

Please and thanks in advanced ;)

I think you unfairly hobbled the CPU and board performance with that heatsink, although it's included, realistically it's no better than the stock HSF, if that, and certainly nowhere in the range of the D15. You should have also tested it with a Corsair H80i or some such, which is about equally matched.

aidanjt
I think you unfairly hobbled the CPU and board performance with that heatsink, although it's included, realistically it's no better than the stock HSF, if that, and certainly nowhere in the range of the D15. You should have also tested it with a Corsair H80i or some such, which is about equally matched.

The board uses a non-conventional mounting system which is why the testing was done with the provided HSF. The usual test setup would have been used if the mounting allowed for it, you need some kind of custom bracket to mount most coolers, which isn't provided. At least that;'s my understanding

RyanM
The board uses a non-conventional mounting system which is why the testing was done with the provided HSF. The usual test setup would have been used if the mounting allowed for it, you need some kind of custom bracket to mount most coolers, which isn't provided. At least that;'s my understanding

I think I saw a video where someone used the mounting hardware for that fan with an H80i without modification. Since the H100i has the same block you could use that too.

aidanjt
I think you unfairly hobbled the CPU and board performance with that heatsink, although it's included, realistically it's no better than the stock HSF, if that, and certainly nowhere in the range of the D15. You should have also tested it with a Corsair H80i or some such, which is about equally matched.

What stock cooler? i7-5xxx don't have a stock cooler.