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HellDiver
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Older X99-A - any reason to upgrade?

Fri Jan 13, 2017 8:58 am

Folks,

I have a fairly elderly Asus X99-A.  I got it quite a while ago with a 5820K, then I ran it with an E5 Xeon in my server, and I recently brought it back to my main rig along with an i7-6800K.  I'm getting a fairly decent overclock of 4.3GHz.

I can't help but wonder if there's anything I'm missing in the more recent X99 boards, assuming I don't need USB3.1 or any blinkenlights?  Would a newer board give me better overclocks?   

The old X99-A is great and all, but still the TPU is totally crazy and seems to want to run the CPU at 5.6GHz (it passes the auto-stability test at that speed, which is clearly BS), and it takes an eternity to boot.

Thanks.
[email protected], Asus X99-A, H110iGT, 32GB Crucial DDR4-2400, Strix 980Ti, 950 Pro M.2, 2x MX300 RAID0, AX860, Define R5 BOE, Win10 Pro.
 
Waco
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Re: Older X99-A - any reason to upgrade?

Fri Jan 13, 2017 12:55 pm

Unless there's additional connectivity on newer boards you want to take advantage of, I don't see much point in spending money to get a faster boot cycle unless that really bothers you and you have money burning a hole in your wallet. :)
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DPete27
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Re: Older X99-A - any reason to upgrade?

Fri Jan 13, 2017 1:17 pm

No upgrade necessary.

Not sure if your long boot times are before or after the Windows screen appears, but Asus TPU could be culprit getting to the Windows screen since TPU may be doing some OC stability checks on boot.  TPU is a great tool to discover what OC your system is capable of, but after that first boot, I'd just jot down the settings TPU is applying, turn TPU off, and manually OC to your liking.

Other things to look for
Do you have quick boot enabled?
Have you turned off unused controllers in the BIOS (Serial port for example).  The less things the mobo has to check for the quicker it boots to Windows.
Do you have your SSD at the top of the list in boot priority?  If the mobo is checking for flash and optical drives with bootable media inserted, that can take longer.

Once you get to the Windows screen, the motherboard has very little to do with boot times.  For all practical purposes, it's done with it's duties by that time.
Main: i5-3570K, ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, MSI RX480 8G, 500GB Crucial BX100, 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4, 16GB 1600MHz G.Skill @1.25V, EVGA 550-G2, Silverstone PS07B
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HellDiver
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Re: Older X99-A - any reason to upgrade?

Mon Jan 16, 2017 7:33 am

I'm seeing a good 10 seconds before the board even initialises USB.  
[email protected], Asus X99-A, H110iGT, 32GB Crucial DDR4-2400, Strix 980Ti, 950 Pro M.2, 2x MX300 RAID0, AX860, Define R5 BOE, Win10 Pro.
 
Krogoth
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Re: Older X99-A - any reason to upgrade?

Mon Jan 16, 2017 7:59 am

I would wait until Skylake-E comes along before upgrading to another workstation-tier platform.
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G8torbyte
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Re: Older X99-A - any reason to upgrade?

Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:10 pm

I briefly tried a newer X99 model, MSI's X99A SLI vs my older X99S SLI-Plus, when I built my nephew an X99 system.
The newer X99 had some problems detecting add-in components like the M.2 NVMe SSD (PCIeX4), sound card, and network Wi-Fi board.
The older X99S had a different PCIE arrangement which detected of all the cards plus the PCIeX4 SSD in the BIOS. I use extra add-ins which need more PCIE lanes and using the 5820K and 6800K CPUs which are limited to 28 lanes probably caused the issue. So I kept the older X99 board, swapped out the 5820K with a 6800K and built my nephew's PC with the newer X99 and the 5280K.
I did notice later the 5820K could take more voltage and OC's better than the 6800K. Anyway I'm done thinking about upgrades for awhile. Ryzen is fascinating me and I've built AMD systems for my family members but looks like the chipset needs more development?
Later, -G8tor
Building PCs & gaming since"Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" 1991, Lurkin' around TR since 2004.
Current setups: Z390 Platform and DIY mini-ITX NAS Build

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