Layout

At a first glance the ASUS X99 Sabertooth leaves a very good impression with its good looking design. The manufacturer decided to go for a combination of black, brown and grey, which suites nicely and in the end you get an aesthetic looking product. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install large CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allows for an easy installation of oversized graphics cards. Regarding the design language this board perfectly suites the TUF series, whereas compared to the Z97 ASUS is underlining the high-end aspect by increasing the weight of the entire product.





The ASUS X99 Sabertooth comes with a digital 8+4 phase power design, where the CPU is backed up by eight phases and the memory by four. Like we've already explained on the features page ASUS is making use of a digital power design. Regarding the CPU VRM there eight IR3535M phases from International Recitifier. They’re being combined with DC-DC converters from On Semiconductor, which go by the name 4C85N. These converters can withstand 25A on the high-side and 49A on the low-side. Apart from that there are black metallic caps, which the imprint FP10K. These caps offer an MTBF of up to 10’000 hours.
A closer look at the power design dedicated to the 8 DIMM slots, reveals that all four channel receive clean power thanks to four phases. The driver MOSFETs come from International Rectifier and the go by the name IR3535M. They maintain stable operation with up to 40A of output current, which is more than enough per DDR4 channel.





Totally you'll find eight DIMM-slots on the ASUS X99 Sabertooth. Officially supported are DDR4 2400 (O.C.) and 2133 (O.C.). There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you won't run into any compatibility problems with large coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.


On the X99 Sabertooth PCH as well as current converters have been equipped with separate cooling blocks. ASUS decided to connect the two VRM coolers with a heatpipe in order to improve the heat transport. Other than that the weight of this board is quite high, which is partially due to cooling blocks. Subjectively speaking a high weight is a first indicator for a quality motherboard. ASUS also treats the heatsinks with a ceramic coating, which should help improving the heat transfer.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 3 - Features	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 4 - Layout	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 21 - Thief
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 22 - Right Mark Audio Analyzer
Page 9 - 3DMark	Page 23 - BCLK Overclocking
Page 10 - 3DMark 11	Page 24 - Power Consumption
Page 11 - 3DMark Vantage	Page 25 - Performance Rating
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 26 - Price Comparison
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1	Page 27 - Conclusion
Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2