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The Asus P9X79 Deluxe is one of five boards that ASUS are releasing today and it is the second most expensive board in their lineup, behind the Rampage IV Extreme. The P9X79 Deluxe will retail in the United Kingdom for £279.99 and is targeted at the higher end audience.
The box is a lovely gatefold design, listing specifications along the top, while exposing the board underneath behind a protective plastic sheet.
The bundle includes four 6GB/s SATA cables, and four 3GB/s SATA cables, a 2 in 1 Q connector, 1x 3 way SLI bridge, 1x SLI bridge, 1 Bluetooth V3.0 & HS module, 1 x Wi-Fi Ring Moving Antenna, an I/O backplate, software/driver disc and user manual.
The motherboard is attractive and a similar colour scheme to the Intel DX79SI which we looked at earlier in this review. It measures 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm, fitting the ATX standard.
The board is populated with attractively designed heatsinks to improve stability under load and when overclocked. This board is a fan-less, passively cooled product.
The P9X79 Deluxe has 8 memory slots with support for up to 64GB of memory. Memory at 1066mhz/1333mhz/1600mhz/1866mhz/2133mhz (O.C.)/2400mhz (OC) can be used. As with all X79 boards the P9X79 Deluxe supports a Quad Channel memory architecture.
The P9X79 Deluxe has 3x PCI Express Slots which can run in dual x16/x16 mode or x16/x8/x8 in a tri configuration. It supports SLI in x3 way, and Crossfire in Quad mode. There are also two PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots.
This Deluxe board has 8 SATA ports. The two grey ports on the left (above) are controlled by the Marvell 9128 controller and are SATA 3 rated (6 GB/s). The four blue ports in the middle are controlled by the Intel X79 Express Chipset which are SATA 2 rated (3 GB/s). The remaining two on the far right (grey) are also controlled by the Intel X79 Express Chipset and are SATA 3 rated (6 GB/s).
Along the bottom is a diagnostic LED readout for troubleshooting potential problems. Next to this is a power and reset button and then a series of USB 2.0 headers. At the far right is a TPU and EPU switch and a system panel connector.
The back I/O panel features a raft of connectivity featuring 6 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (blue), 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, 1 x USB BIOS Flashback button, 1 x Bluetooth V3.0 + HS module (Bluetooth V2.1 module & WiFi antenna port). There are also 2 x LAN (RJ-45) ports (1x Intel LAN), 1 Optical S/PDIF out and 2 power eSATA 6GB/s ports (green). Finally, at the far right is full 8 Channel audio support.
