Conclusion

...these considerations make the £275 asking price of the X99-Deluxe board an understandable outlay in the larger scheme of things.

Asus has made a number of improvements in the transition of Deluxe boards between the X79 and X99 generations. Now equipped with a better BIOS, more features, and with a company-specific socket that promises class-leading overclocking, the Taiwanese giant sets a good standard for others to follow.

The X99 platform is expensive. 16GB of memory sets you back over £170, the motherboards certainly aren't cheap, and Intel has raised the price of the entry-level chip to $389 (£300). These considerations make the £275 asking price of the X99-Deluxe board an understandable outlay in the larger scheme of things.

You should only be contemplating the X99 platform if huge CPU performance is needed. Backing up that platform requires a quality motherboard. Asus, with the X99-Deluxe, has a very solid offering whose enhanced feature-set complements the high-end platform well.

The Good

OC Socket
Well-rounded feature set
Good BIOS
Great colour scheme
SATA Express support
Enhanced WiFi

The Bad

The price, potentially

Asus X99-Deluxe

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The Asus X99-Deluxe is available from Scan Computers*.

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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.

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This is more an overview than a review

Why would you think that? There are 18 benchmark results in the table section, plus overclocking results for the CPU.

Thanks for covering the cooling options Tarinder. The sort of thing that's really important but is often overlooked.

I recently built a system based on a ASUS Z97-K and the automatic cooling profiling stunned me. You can do it in their ASUS Probe software too, so in Windows in 2 clicks you can switch from normal to full speed or completely silent, or anywhere in between. It entirely does away with the need for a fan-controller.

I've never been gobsmacked by motherboard manufacturer's software, but ASUS has torn up the rule-book recently.

Reviews like this just end up tempting me to buy into features that I will only use a few times when I set up the PC but once I've played with them I end up disabling or ignoring, like overclocking features, I overclocked my current CPU to 4.7ghz when I first got my rig running but now run it at stock. I have to learn to make buying decisions that aren't based on features that I won't need but instead concentrate on components that give me benefits I do need.

Still a great and thorough review, thanks.

This is gorgeous. I think I'd be tempted to frame it without it ever being used :)