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ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer Micro-ATX Motherboard Reviewed

Eric Garay
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Cost continues to influence consumer spending. This is especially true with today’s X99 motherboards. Some feature rich models cost a premium while others are more affordable. Affordable boards can means fewer premium features, though reliability and performance should never be sacrificed. However, another way of offsetting costs while adding a few features back is to build one on a Micro ATX form factor. That’s exactly what we’re looking at today with the ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer, which is an attractive gamer theme motherboard, in a smaller size.

Features and Specifications

The ASRock X99M Killer micro-ATX is one of two boards of their kind in their X99 line up which include the OC Formula, Fatal1ty, Extreme and Work Station (WS). Naturally, the Fatal1ty has a theme and features that entice gamers, while the X99M Extreme is more mainstream. So, what makes the Fatal1ty X99M Killer so special?

  • 60 Amp choke 12-Phase Digi Power design which usually means decent overclocking presets in the BIOS. This can also improve over all CPU turbo response increasing system performance.
  • Fatal1ty Mouse Port – Control the DPI responsiveness of your mouse through the port driver.
  • Dual Gigabit LAN – One is an Intel I218V and the other Qualcomm Atheros AR8171 coupled with a Killer E2200 controller. The E2200 lowers latency and allows users to prioritize bandwidth resources to games. You’re in control!
  • Purity Sound 2 – A 7.1 channel HD Realtek ALC1150 audio processor, TI NE5532 front panel amplifier coupled and Nichicon audio capacitors create a clearer, richer gaming experience. With 20 Hz low bass frequencies, you should be able to feel your enemy breathing.
  • Intel Ultra M.2 Interface – An M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 slot supports both M.2 PCIe and M.2 SATA SSDs. (M.2 PCIe is the fastest SSD solution compared to M.2 SATA.)

A couple other gamer features include the Macro Key and Sniper Key, aimed at giving gamers an edge. The Macro Key software helps you set up hotkeys and macros which come in handy for quick loading profiles, key bindings, or skill combinations depending on your game. A decent gamer oriented keyboard also comes in handy.

The Sniper Key controls your mouse sensitivity on the fly. With the key enabled, your mouse DPI changes to help lessen cursor movement. No, it won’t aim for you but it’ll help you zero in a target better. Interestingly, many high end gaming mice also feature on-the-fly DPI changes but if you don’t have one, Sniper Key is as close to an aimbot as you can get without giving in to the sad existence of cheating.

Finally, the last important feature is the cost of the board. The board will hit the market at $249.99 USD at most retailers.

What’s in the Box?

The bundle is very basic. It includes two SATA data cables, two SATA power adapter cables, manuals, software DVD, SLI/CrossFireX ribbon and an IO shield. It doesn’t get any more simple than that. While this may seem meager, we’re okay with it if the money was spent on physical board features and components rather than the bundle. Lets look at the board and find out if this is the case.

A Closer Look at the ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer

 

The ASRock Fatality X99M Killer m-ATX motherboard is quite attractive with the red on black gamer theme. Despite the compact nature of the board, all the USB, SATA, fan, front panel, and auxiliary power are located around the edges of the board, which is great for easy access.

The CPU socket has several beneficial components that are used to ensure stability, processor scaling and of course overclocking. These components include NexFET MOSFETS found next to the memory and CPU sockets, which are the flat design, for much better efficiency as well as cooler operation, and better heatsink compatibility. Power Chokes line the upper heat sink providing up to 60 Amps which is helpful with providing continued stable current improving VCore voltage. While this can improve standard performance, it also also helps when overclocking.

Storage needs are met with 10 SATA3 6Gb/s red ports utilizing the Intel X99 chipset. Unfortunately, like most motherboards, there is one caveat when implementing the M.2 interface. The SATA port 3 shares the bus with the eSATA port on the back. And, SATA port 2 shares the bus with the Ultra M.2 socket. Typically, this means the port may be inactive depending on the bandwidth the storage devices consume.

The three expansion slots (PCI Express) are spaced just right for installing 2, 2.5, or 3 slot graphics cards. That of course leaves no other slots for additional cards like RAID or audio cards. For most gamers, the Intel X99 chipset supported RAID protocols are honestly more than enough.

The Purity Sound 2 feature is basically an upgraded Realtek ACL1150 audio processor. This processor is capable of quite a bit more if the partners unlock the features through licensing which usually increases costs. In this case, ASRock added Nichicon audio capacitors, a 115dB SNR DAC amplifier, a front port TI NE5532 amplifier, EMI shielding and of course better isolated PCB components to prevent noise. Audio should be just fine which we’ll check in testing.

Let’s build a system and get on to some testing!


Test System Setup

In order to remain more of less uniform with testing of X99 boards, we’ve taken the same components used in our previous ASUS X99 Deluxe and Intel Core i7-5960X launch articles. Here is the listing for reference.

Drivers included the NVIDIA 344.48 graphics, ASRock 1.60 UEFI BIOS, Intel Management Engine version 10.0.25.1048, Intel INF driver version 10.0.20_PV, Atheros LAN driver version 1.1.42.1291, Intel LAN driver version 19.1 and Intel USB 3.0 driver version 3.0.0.20 for testing.

Installation Notes

This section is very important in terms of evaluating the motherboard. The overall experience determines whether or not consumers will value the board equally. The smoother the installation and setup, the better. Here’s what we experienced.

During installation, seating video cards, DDR4 memory, and the CPU cooler was not an issue. The main connections are all around the board’s edges so they’re easy to access. Also, locating the ports is easy in a mid-tower or full-tower chassios. The IO ports detected any and all connected devices including some of the random gamer keyboards with internal memory. However, the DIMM slots are close to the CPU socket which were slightly covered by our quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU cooler. This should not be an issue with smaller coolers, or liquid coolers.

BIOS and Overclocking Notes 

After updating and browsing the BIOS, it’s nice to see ASRock put some effort in to clearing things up a bit. The BIOS is a little simpler to navigate than others in some respects which is not a bad thing. It’s best when users can find what they need and understand the functions relatively easily.

(Click to Enlarge)

Setting up the BIOS was quite quick. Locating the storage, connectivity and overclocking features is easy. The overclocking settings are all located in one tab. However, understanding those settings based on their label isn’t so clear. There are two specific settings that overclock the CPU along with a max XMP memory profile or ones that just overclock the CPU. Not many Haswell-E processors can achieve 2800 MHz or higher XMP settings, so the first proved useless. The second offered 4.0 to 4.5 GHz frequencies. The maximum stable setting achieved was 4.4 GHz which is surprisingly robust for an mATX platform in this price range.

The side effect with overclocking is that the ASRock X99M Killer automatically ramped fan speeds to max using 4.3 GHz or higher options. PWM control went out the window so noise was about 24 dB(A) on the lab CPU air cooler and 35 dB(A) on the liquid cooler. Keep in mind this is almost par for the course on most motherboards when overclocking.

The ASRock’s F-Stream Utility

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After handling F-Stream up close and personal, we found that it’s actually simple enough to use, yet includes enough advanced settings to get dangerous. Operation Mode offers Performance, Standard and Power Saving modes. Performance mode offers overclocking presets ranging from 4.0 GHz to 4.5 GHz, which is actually Haswell-E’s safest upper limit on the average. The system was perfectly stable at 4.4 GHz but not any higher. Standard leaves the system in stock configuration. Power Saving mode makes lower power consumption the priority which is noticeable mainly when doing desktop things but not standard use.

The Tools tab lets users access ASRock’s features like XFast RAM, USB Key, Key Master, Fatal1ty Mouse Port as well as Intel’s own features like Fast Boot settings for shorter response times. All of these LifeStyle options allow users to control and configure the gamer friendly options as well as the LED lighting on the board.

OC Tweaker has slider style options for manually overclocking the system. The sliders worked as well as can be expected within the OS. Like all desktop overclocking utilities, at some point the system will become unstable which is often why enthusiasts like the BIOS route better. Overall, DIY enthusiasts should find F-Stream a nice usable feature.

Overall, it looks like the BIOS and software are coming along well, and we might even see further improvements as X99 boards mature. Next, let’s get to benchmarking to see how everything holds together.

Benchmark Test Results

Stock and overclocked frequencies were recorded. A system must achieve at least a 3-day error and crash free result with a completely patched OS and go through our entire benchmark suite. These are the basic requirements that must be met for any board to get a pass from us. The ASRock X99M Killer managed this hurdle without issue so lets check out the results.

PCMark 8 – Conventional

 

Overall system performance shows the Fatal1ty X99M Killer can hold the Haswell-E’s weight nicely. The overclock showed very respectable gains. This is a great way for ASRock to start out with the X99 platform.

SANDRA – Multimedia and Mathematics

It’s like watching the same system run CPU benchmarks over and over. The BIOS tuning is evident across all the platforms. Keep in mind that this is just standard mode. Each platform has performance settings that will increase performance.

X.264 GraySky 5.0

Since content creation is heavily influenced by motherboard and CPU communication, the H.264 benchmark can paint a pretty good picture of the platform’s capabilities. I reran the benchmark in Standard and Performance modes to see that the ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer performed really well scoring an average of 119.71 and 124.41 respectively.

Cinebench R15 – CPU Rendering

BIOS tuning influences CineBench performance as well. The results again are comparable to previous X99 platforms. The ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer achieves a nice overclocked score.

Graphics – Gaming

Even though gaming performance is often very close from board to board, we still like to make sure that graphics is working in all the ports. It’s clear that the smaller form factor will not leave you hungry GPU starved for bandwidth.

Next, we’ll check in on the hardware features including the audio and the IO, and take it home!

Audio Performance

Well, audio is audio to the average Joe, but gamers and enthusiasts will appreciate the better than average audio experience. The headset audio is particularly robust thanks to the amps. It’s somewhere between the performance of a standard board and higher end GIGABYTE OP AMP experience. Overall, it’s about as decent as any of the boards that have come across us so far, short of using a discrete audio solution.

IO Connectivity

Performance is on par if not nearly the same as the much more expensive ASUS X99 Deluxe’s performance. The M.2 PCIe continues to impress in terms of performance. It sometimes makes regular budget SSDs seem like they’re standing still.

Final Thoughts

The ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer fills a more unique void in the X99 gamer category. The micro-ATX size for a good platform, with some upper echelon features, without a hefty premium. The Purity Sound 2 provided a good gaming audio experience, especially through many of our high end quality gaming headsets in the lab. Network management is always a nice touch given so many spammy style programs that hog up bandwidth, and you have your choice of Intel and Killer for your connectivity needs with two ports. Most importantly, the X99M Killer was actually a pleasure to work with during installation and configuration, proving that ASRock is also continuing to improve and grow. It also overclocks quite well which was not expected given its price range and form factor.

There are only a couple very minor issues with the platform mainly relating to the BIOS, F-Stream LifeStyle features and 3pin fan headers. More intuitive BIOS descriptions in the BIOS are always helpful especially if users don’t have or need to open the manual. A few simple LifeStyle features shouldn’t require a reboot and could use a little more information to help new or less technically inclined users. We’re also at a point where all boards should feature 4pin (PWM) fan headers rather than 3pin. However, these aren’t deal breakers and are pretty minor.

As mentioned earlier, the $249.99 US price point is definitely on the lower side for an X99 based board, allowing enthusiasts and gamers to own the ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer sooner. The extra features, performance and overclocking make the fact that it is micro-ATX, a non issue. Unless you need more PCI-e slots.

That said, if you’re upgrading your system, and don’t see a need for an ATX board, the ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer micro-ATX gaming motherboard comes highly recommended.

Pros

  • Attractive gamer theme design
  • Stable performance
  • Overclocks relatively well (4.4GHz)
  • BIOS easy to figure out
  • F-Stream software comes in handy for managing
  • Just the right amount of fan headers and storage
  • Better quality audio improves the gaming experience

Cons

  • Good Night LED function didn’t work
  • Key Master and Fatal1ty Mouse Port best for basic peripherals only
  • LifeStyle feature descriptions are needed
  • 3pin fan headers are outdated

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

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