Lath Layout & Design

It goes without saying but we will anyway because we still can't quite believe it: every bit a Mini-ITX motherboard the Asrock X99E-ITX/ac measures just 170mm x 170mm. This is remarkable given the standard square ILM LGA2011-3 socket measures 90mm x 90mm and would occupy almost xxx% of the bachelor infinite on the X99E-ITX/ac.

Being so tight on infinite, Asrock opted to use the narrow ILM LGA2011-3 socket, making it slightly longer but much thinner at 100mm x 75mm which takes upwards roughly 26% of the board'south infinite.

Because the socket isn't standard, the mounting spots are off so almost no after-market LGA2011-iii coolers will work with the X99E-ITX/ac. The solution was obvious: use a server-grade narrow ILM CPU cooler.

Non wanting to limit their customers to air cooling, Asrock went ane footstep farther and included a custom h2o cooling mounting plate that is compatible with Libation Chief'southward Seldom 120V Plus/120V closed loop CPU liquid coolers.

As you might expect, not everything is perfectly placed on the X99E-ITX/ac, simply the board's layout is ideal for the near part. The 24-pivot power connector is at up top and this worked well for our build. The eight-pin CPU power connector is on the opposite side of the board toward the I/O console and being that it is right on the edge nosotros take no trouble reaching it.

The two DIMM slots are placed snug confronting the CPU socket, only this doesn't cause any problems when using retentiveness with over-sized heatspreaders such as the Kingston DDR4 Predator memory that we used.

There are four ninety-degree mounted SATA ports in the bottom right corner of the board just higher up the PCI Express x16 slot. They are easy plenty to access hither, even with a long graphics card installed. The SATA Express connector is a little more than hard to access equally it is mounted in a central location in a higher place the PCI Express slot.

The underside of the board features a few chips just aught noteworthy. There aren't any subconscious mSATA or Grand.two slots here either.

The I/O panel carries but two USB 2.0 ports, a legacy PS/two port, CMOS reset switch, eSATA port, four USB 3.0 ports, two USB iii.ane Type-A ports, 2 RJ-45 network connectors and five audio jacks with a Southward/PDIF port.