ASUS TUF Sabertooth X79

ASUS' top-tier LGA2011 lineup is completed by the TUF Sabertooth X79. This board, along with the ROG Rampage IV Extreme and P9X79 Deluxe makes up for it. There will be many more affordable LGA2011 boards by ASUS, one such model we're hearing about is the P9X79 Pro. The TUF Sabertooth family is based on the idea of rock-solid stability and component durability, these motherboards are built to last, if not score accolades with overclocking like the ROG boards are designed for.

The Sabertooth X79 uses an ASUS-designed Digi+ VRM to power the CPU, which is spread across two sides of the socket (north and west). The heatsink cooling the VRM components to the west is actively cooled by a 40 mm fan, the one over the X79 PCH is cooled by a similarly sized lateral blower, too. Like with the other two top-tier boards from ASUS' stable, this one provides eight DDR3 DIMM slots supporting quad-channel memory.

Expansion slots include two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 wired to the processor, one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8), and two PCI-Express 2.0 x1, wired to the PCH. There are eight internal SATA ports, including two SATA 6 Gb/s (brown) from the PCH, four SATA 3 Gb/s (black) also from the PCH, and two SATA 6 Gb/s (white) from a third-party controller. There are two eSATA ports on the rear-panel, one of which is power-eSATA.

Other connectivity includes 8+2 channel HD audio, one gigabit Ethernet connection, four USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel, two USB 3.0 ports by internal header, USB 2.0, and Firewire.