Sapphire Pure Black 990FX review

Sapphire’s Pure Black 990FX motherboard didn’t perform too well in our benchmark tests, providing an overall score of 83, but it certainly looks well equipped, having six full-length PCI-E x16 slots. However, only two of these can actually serve as x16 slots. Another two are really x8 slots and the remainder are PCI-E x4 slots. There are no PCI slots, so you can forget about adding any older sound cards or TV tuners that you might have lying around. The two PCI-E x16 slots support CrossFireX multi-GPU configurations.

The plethora of expansion options doesn’t end with its PCI-E slots. There are nine SATA3 ports, as well as an eSATA3 port at the back. The back panel also has eight USB2 ports and two USB3 connections. There are two more USB3 headers on the board itself and four more for USB2. There’s not much else back there apart from 7.1 analogue audio outputs and both coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs.

Sapphire’s UEFI configuration interface isn’t as glossy or easy to use and navigate as those from rivals MSI and Asus. It feels like some strange hybrid of EFI and BIOS, but it has all the options you need to overclock your Bulldozer processor. If you enjoy tweaking your system’s performance, you’ll also appreciate the power, reset and CMOS clearing buttons on the board itself. Four memory slots can take up to 16GB of RAM running at 1,866MHz and the motherboard has an integrated Bluetooth adaptor.

Although it overclocks well enough and has some nice features, including a handy USB3 front panel insert, the Pure Black 990FX’s performance isn’t worth the £124 price, especially when you can buy the MSI 990FXA-GD65 for less