ASUS Ready With X79 Workstation Board

Republic of Gamers and Sabertooth aren't the only special client motherboard product lines of ASUS apart from its mainline, there's also the WS (workstation) series, that consists of motherboards fit for mission-critical environments, and which are filled to the brim with features. These motherboards are often based on chipset from Intel client product lines, rather than enterprise ones. Intel's Sandy Bridge-E 1P platform will get a similar treatment with the P9X79WS.

Based on the ATX form-factor, the P9X79WS uses a typical X79 motherboard layout. The socket LGA2011 is powered by a 10-phase Digi+ VRM, which is cooled by a heatsink that shares its heat with a VRM heatsink cluster over the memory VRM, and the one over the X79 PCH. There are eight DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting quad-channel DDR3 memory. All expansion slots are PCI-Express long-type, though the exact lane configuration is not known. The board is advertised with 4-way NVIDIA SLI and CrossFireX support, so at least four of those slots could be wired to the CPU.


Storage connectivity includes two SATA 6 Gb/s and four SATA 3 Gb/s from the PCH, two SATA 6 Gb/s from a discrete controller, and surprisingly, no eSATA. ASUS could have taken the opportunity to provide a more robust storage connectivity, maybe even drop in a discrete SAS controller. There are six USB 3.0 ports, two on the rear panel, four by headers. There are two gigabit Ethernet connections, both driven by Intel-made controllers. Firewire and 8-channel HD audio make for the rest of it. Expect this one to be among the more expensive socket LGA2011 motherboards you can buy from ASUS.