14 DAY TRIAL // The X99 chipset has already powered several platforms that will harbor the Haswell-E line of Core i7 central processing units as soon as they debut at the end of August. It's been an unspoken rule, though, that all of them be designed with the full ATX form factor.
ASRock has decided to step out of that unspoken norm and release a significantly smaller board which, nonetheless, still integrates everything that makes the X99 chipset what it is.
The result was the ASRock X99M Killer, a smaller version of the X99 Killer which we covered not too long ago.
As is normal for X99 platforms, the LGA 2011-3 socket is present, as required by the Haswell-E series of chips that Intel is just under two weeks away from launching.
The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 memory slots, arranged in pairs on either side of it. Quite impressive that ASRock managed to squeeze them in, considering that micro-ATX motherboards usually settle for a single pair.
The slots should easily handle memory kits like the Vengeance LPX and Dominator Platinum from Corsair. The former likely more than the latter, as their low profile heatspreaders will make it easier to install around whatever huge cooler you outfit your PC with.
Each slot can receive modules of up to 8 GB of storage space, but that capability should easily extend to 16 GB once the DDR4 technology finally reaches that stage, in 2015.
Even if the X99M Killer ships without full support for them, it shouldn't take more than a BIOS update to add 16 GB capability later on.
Moving on, the ASRock X99M Killer micro-ATX motherboard has one ultra M.2 slot, which means that the M.2 port is wired through the PCI Express interface, a PCI Express 3.0 x4 link to be precise. It means that M.2 SSDs can function at up to 1.8 GB/s instead of the 500-600 MB/s that the SATA technology would limit things to.
Furthermore, ASRock included dual Gigabit Ethernet networking (via Intel and Killer E2200), Purity Sound 2 audio (7.1 channel), four USB 3.0 connectors, an eSATA connector, two Fatal1ty mouse ports, and a debug LED.
Unfortunately, ASRock does not say what price the X99M Killer motherboard sports. Whatever it is, though, it will be lower than for basically every other X99 platform out there, unless someone launches another micro-ATX model. Because of that, it might sell a lot better than the rest.
