 Welcome to my unboxing of the Asus P9 X79 Deluxe. So out of their non-saber tooth and non-republican gamers boards, this is the highest end. It's pretty much a fully loaded X79 board with all of the standard X79 features as well as some more unique Asus ones. So the first thing we see over here is PCIe 3.0 ready. So there you go, that's there in the corner. We got that out of the way right off the bat. It uses the X79 chipset, supports Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition or Non-Extreme Edition processors on LG 820 11. We've got support for Nvidia SLI as well as AMD Crossfire X, Quad Channel DDR3 memory with up to 8 DIMMs supported. We've got Bluetooth 3.0 which is basically with their included app, it allows you to do a few cool things with it and it's also better bandwidth than any previous versions. We've got their UEFI BIOS which their implementation was very, very good on their previous generation board so I'm expecting it to be excellent here. Asus SSD caching uses a third party controller so even though Intel doesn't have SRT support on this chipset, Asus has found a way to use a third party chipset to support SSD caching anyway. Precise power control using their sixth generation of digital VRM solutions including not only digital VRM on the CPU itself but also on the memory. What else we got here? So dual intelligent processors with new DigiPlus power control so that is their TPU as well as their EPU. So the TPU is responsible for any performance tuning. It can do automatic tuning and Asus claims you can achieve up to pretty close to what you can do without automatic tuning so by manually dialing in your overclock, Asus figures with this module doing it for you rather than working off of just a preset profile, the TPU tweaks it, adjusts it and can get pretty close to what you can do on your own so I'm looking forward to testing that out. We've also got their EPU which is basically undervolting profiles as well as some utilities that allow you to make your PC more power efficient. USB BIOS flashback, this is really cool. So just by putting the BIOS on any USB storage device, renaming it to a standard name and then holding down this button it takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes and you can reflash your BIOS no matter how corrupted it is even without a CPU or memory installed in the system. Phenomenal. USB 3.0 boost allows them to use UASP which isn't supported by many devices now but this will be important in the future to get faster transmission speed over USB. It can also use the SCSI protocol as well, or not the SCSI protocol sorry, which one's the other one that it uses? Hold on, I'm just going to cheat and look over at my notes there and UASP, oh yeah okay, legacy mode SCSI and UASP, okay that was right, excellent. We've also got fan experts which gives you 5 configurable fan headers including the CPU one and 4 of the case ones and then an additional one that runs in clone mode or mimic mode off the CPU one and finally DTS audio so they have upgraded the codecs that are included with this particular board and I think that pretty much does it for the packaging. Let's get it opened up and have a look, yes I think everything on the back is pretty much what we've seen already, supports 3-way SLI and up to quad crossfire X for those who were wondering. Here's the board itself but I'm just going to show you guys the accessories before we get into the board itself and we will find those down here, all kinds of good stuff included here. So we have Bluetooth v3.0 HS module, oh okay it's instructions for how to mount, where is it? Here, this thing, neat. Alright we've got an IO shield which is helpfully labeled. We've also got some SATA cables, so 1, 2, 3, 4, so looks like 4 SATA 3 6 gigabit per second cables and 4 SATA 2 3 gigabit per second cables. We've also got an antenna, we've got an SLI bridge, a 3-way SLI bridge, remember your crossfire bridge should be included with your video card not your motherboard. We've also got their Q connector so that's for your front panel connectors as well as one of your front USBs. We have a driver disc which I'm probably going to have to use this disc because this is a pre-release sample board. We've also got a user guide which is probably incomplete at this time as well but your retail board will come with a proper driver disc and you'll be able to go to the ASUS website to download the latest drivers whereas I can't because the board is not yet released. Alright let's open it up and have a look at the board itself. So ASUS' layout is what I would consider to be fairly ideal here. So you've got 1, 2, 3 slots that are going to be your go-to slots for 3-way SLI or 3-way crossfire without overhanging the end of the board which would require you to have an 8-slot chassis. You know what, let's start at the socket. So here's your LGA 2011 socket. If you guys aren't familiar with this already which you're probably not too familiar with, you do need to unfasten both arms and lift up the flap in order to open up the socket, install your 2011 processor and then you have to put down this arm and then this one in order to get it closed again. Before anyone asks, and I always get these questions, no you cannot put a 1366 or an 1155 core i7 or core i5 processor in there, it will not work. You will need a 2011 processor. This is a brand new socket and a brand new architecture. So speaking of brand new architectures, we've got support for quad channel memory. So look at that, 8 DIMM slots gives you up to 64 gigs of memory using what's available on the market today. You can buy 8 gig unbuffered DIMMs, wow, or 32 gigs of memory on the cheap because RAM is so inexpensive these days. You can have a 32 gig system which is workstation class at that point without spending a ton of money. Simply awesome. Okay, we've got our 8 pin power connector in its ideal location up here at the top left. We've got moving over here a couple of those fan headers that I talked about before as well as an additional one. So there's three in the top right corner here. Four more DIMM slots, our 24 pin connector in its ideal location along the right hand edge. And then we've got our fan connector, front USB 3 in what I personally consider to be its ideal location along the right hand edge because one way or another this is going to plug into either sort of up here or down here. It's going to go to the front of your case though, not the bottom of your case which is where we typically find USB front panel headers. Here we find four SATA 3 6 gigabit per second ports and four SATA 2 3 gigabit per second ports as well as our front panel headers. Our TPU, so remember that's the performance one and our EPU which if you'll recall is the efficiency one. Remember guys, these don't actually, like if you flip the TPU, that switch, that's not actually going to like affect any overclocking settings that you're using. You're just using that if you want to use like the tools that Asus has built for pre-overclocks. Okay, we have four USB 2 front panel headers, which is a lot. Yep, those are all USB. We've got a clear SIMO switch, built-in reset and power switches, a post LED readout. This is truly a very high end board, so everything on here is pretty much the cream of the cream. We've got one, hold on, which ones are actually wired for 16x? One, two that are wired for full 16x operation and it looks like that's why Asus has included a long SLI bridge because if you are running dual cards, they want you to run in this one and this one, which would leave you with two 8x slots for additional expansion. Remember, you can install 1x or 4x or 8x cards in an 8x slot, so that gives you the best flexibility. So two dual slot graphics cards is going to cover up your next two 1xs but leave you with two more slots. So it's not a bad little layout there. In terms of cooling and VRM, so this is interesting. So Asus actually has their VRM heat sink stretches all the way around here. So I just want to give you guys a good, sorry, I'm trying to find a good angle for you. You guys can check out the cooling solution. So there's a heat pipe linking the two coolers and I'm just going to turn it over here so you guys can have a look. Now one thing that's really challenging from a board design perspective on these 8-dim LGA 2011 boards is that compared to previous generation products, there's very little room to put power delivery systems over here and on the top of the board because this socket is so much larger than a 1366 socket. I mean, a 1366 socket is more like this. Plus you're adding a full two additional dim slots and making it so that you pretty much have to put them on both sides of the CPU socket. So that's an engineering marvel to be perfectly honest with you guys. On the back we're going to find no PS2 port. Look at that. One, two, three, four USB 2.0 ports. That handy dandy BIOS reflash button. So there's the color coded port for that. We have one, two, three, four, five, six USB 3.0 ports. We have two gigabit ethernet ports, optical audio out, two eSATA ports and 7.1 audio out. So truly the kitchen sink is pretty much included there. Check this out. It's got power delivery circuitry built into the back of the board. So here's a heat sink. Here's some modules. And then here is your prototype backplate for the LGA 2011 board here. So one thing that you guys might want to bear in mind is some of the newer cases these days, their top cooling fans are designed for exhaust. But if I see something like this where I've got heat sinks here that are in a crowded area that's difficult to cool and then I've also got additional components on the back of the board, I might think about in a case that has a top fan, turning that fan around and blowing it down onto the CPU socket in order to get additional cooling. Remember, these CPUs, once you're overclocking, are capable of sucking about 200 watts through the CPU socket alone. That is a serious amount of power and a serious amount of heat to dissipate in a very small area. So based on seeing that, if you have this board and you can get some benefit from the additional cooling on the back of the board, I say go for it. So thank you guys for checking out my unboxing of the P9X79 Deluxe from Asus. Don't forget to subscribe for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.