Good X99 Board for Broadwell-E. Considering GB Ultra Gaming - any other suggestions?

[kilosi]

I'm upgrading my 6+ year old machine and will be getting a Broadwell-E 6850k to OC.

The motherboard I am considering is Gigabytes Ultra Gaming (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128928). This has a lot of things I like but I have read that the board seems to have issues like a lack of debug LED and some issues with varying voltage during OCs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhlLqpckO1o can read the first set of comments instead of watching).

I looked at other MBs but nothing really jumped out. Many X99 boards seem to get really poor ratings. Usually, I can filter out the noise but that seems to be harder this time for me.

So I come to you all to give me some suggestions on possible alternatives.

I want a MB that most certainly is ready out of the box for a 6850k OR has a USB flash port for BIOS updating (I don't have a spare processor to upgrade the BIOS). Additionally, I'll be running at least 3 drives (2 SSD [one will be a m.2], and 1 non-SSD data drive). Long term, I'll be running 2 video cards.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Tanyac]

The ASRock X99 Fatal1ty Gaming I7 is a good board IMHO. I have one, have had no issues, has that debug led and dual BIOS.It also has 2 x M.2 x4 slots for drives like the Samung 950/960.

I spent ages looking for a good board. I got an MSI X99A XPower AC. I kept it for about a month before I got sick of it.

ASUS X99 boards seem to have a lot of Chipset issues.

I also didn;t get the Gigabyte because the LAN ports were not both Intel, and even though LAN Teaming is all hype, at least I can team them if I want to whereas with Intel & Atheros you can't.

Just my 2c worth

 

[kilosi]

Thanks for the reply. I checked out the board you listed and it seems to be pretty good. Why didn't you like the MSI XPower?

 

[Tanyac]

Thanks for the reply. I checked out the board you listed and it seems to be pretty good. Why didn't you like the MSI XPower?

1. The BIOS is terribly lacking in features
2. The FAN headers are not actually PWM. They advertise they are all 4-Pin headers. but at least half of them only have three pins connected. So not PWM.
3. The System management software (Command Center?? - can't remember it's name), requires that Intel ME drivers be installed and I didn't want to install them.
4. I had issues getting my DDR4-3200 working. I had 2 x 32gb kits, of the same brand and model, (F4-3200C16Q-32GTZB), and they would not work. I know installing non-matching kits is a crap shoot anyway, but I had the memory available. After some research it turns out the board is not good at running 64GB RAM period, even with matched kits.

The ASRock also has an extra M.2 slot which grabbed my attention. I've got 2 M.2 drives now.