First Looks: ASUS P9X79 Pro & Deluxe - Mainstream Boards, High End Features by VR-Zone.com

Completing our three part Asus X79 Motherboard series roundup is the mainstream P9X79 Pro and P9X79 Deluxe. Like the Sabertooth X79 and the ROG Rampage IV Extreme, both boards did not compromise on implementing full 8 slots of DDR3 memory expansion, and every inch of their PCB is packed with quality components for lasting reliability and unhinged performance.

P9X79 Pro Front View (8 DIMMs for a maximum of 64GB, PCIe 3.0 x16 slots)



P9X79 Deluxe - no you are not seeing double. The Deluxe has an almost identical board layout but has an additional Realtek Gigabit Controller and BT GO! 3.0 with Wifi Connectivity.



I/O Panel of the P9X79 Pro (Intel 82579V Gigabit LAN, 2 Power eSATA from an ASMedia 1061 controller, 4 USB 3.0 from ASMedia 1042 controller, 1 SuperSpeed USB Controller from VIA VL810 and Audio from a Realtek ALC89.

The BIOS reset button can also be used to update the BIOS using a USB thumbdrive without booting the PC.



2 SATA 6GB/s ports (white) and 4 SATA 6GB/s ports(blue) from the X79 Chipset.

Like the Sabertooth X79, A Marvell 9128 provides 2 additional 6Gbps ports (grey) and supports pairing a mechanical harddrive with a solid state drive for SSD caching which is useful as the X79 chipset does not have Intel SRT as seen on Z68 motherboards.



PORT 80 display and Power/Reset buttons - these life-saving features should be a must-have on any DIY retail motherboard. All ASUS X79 boards also have 64MB of UEFI Bios Flash ROM, which is a requirement for the next generation Intel Ivy Bridge-E platform.



Some minor PCIe Switching and Multiplexing going on here



CPU Socket Area. We noticed that the whole family of ASUS X79 boards share almost the same layout over here, which could explain why they could implement the full 8 slots of DIMMs even on their lower end SKUs.





MemOK! Boot-time Watchdog Trigger button and Plenty of PWM 4-pin Fan Headers (6 in total) around the motherboard



Digi+ EPU (VRM) for the memory and another for the CPU. Both boards have 8+2+2+2 Power Phase Design



Accessories of the P9X79 Pro