Motherboards News - Page 37

ASRock has just unveiled its new Ultra M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 connection interface that is said to double its transfer speed bandwidth, and blow SATA 3 6GB/s out of the water. The new Ulra M.2 interface is much faster due to a direct connection to the CPU, whereas older M.2 interfaces passed through the chipset before being routed to the CPU. This means that the latency is much lower and faster transfer speeds are the result.

"The theoretical speed of Ultra M.2 is 32Gb/s, which is 6X faster than PCIe x1 M.2, and 3X faster than PCIe x2 M.2. As for Ultra M.2 vs. normal M.2 comparison, we tested the read speed of Samsung XP941 PCIe x4 M.2 SSD on Ultra M.2 socket and reached 1.16GB/s, 46% faster than PCIe x2 M.2 socket. We also tested a PCIe x2 M.2 SSD on Ultra M.2 socket. Benefited from the direct linkage between Ultra M.2 interface and CPU, the PCIe x2 M.2 SSD read speed on Ultra M.2 socket is 8.8% faster than on normal M.2 socket. As shown in Chart 3, the lower latency of Ultra M.2 design does matter," ASRock said in a release.

ASRock says that for now, the new Ultra M.2 interface will only be available on the new ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 motherboard which features other high-end features such as; ASRock Super Alloy technology, 12 Phase Power Design, Purity Sound 2, Dual LAN, SATA Express interface, and ASRock Cloud.

During the last week we've seen a variety of motherboards launched using Intel's new Z97 chipset, all before Computex kicks off for another year in June. MSI broke out of the gate with some delicious motherboards, launching its new OC Series of motherboards.

MSI has snapped its Z97 Express-based motherboards into two lines of boards, the Gaming Series and OC Series. The new Gaming Series is priced between $100-$220, offering features that are aimed at gamers with decent overclocks. The OC Series however, is priced at $200-$400 and is geared toward professional and competitive overclockers.

MSI's new OC Series includes the Z97 MPower, Z97 MPower MAX AC, and the Z97 XPower AC. Starting with MSI's flagship motherboard, the Z97 XPower AC, which is made for seriously high-end builds. It features strong CPU and RAM overclocking capabilities, as well as 3- and 4-way GPU setups. We have the PEX8747 bridge chip from the folks at PLX, allowing you to drive four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, an an overriding single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot. When this slot is used, it wires the add-on card directly to the CPU's root complex, bypassing the PLX chip.

ASRock has quickly grown to be one of the foremost motherboard manufacturers in the custom PC world and with Intel's pending release of its new 5th Generation Haswell Processors for 2014, the company has prepared an entire line of Z97-based motherboards for 2014. While we are sure that ASRock will be showing them all of at Computex 2014, TweakTown has been given a special look into the line in the form of 19 photos.

No information was given on each specific motherboard except that they are Z97 based, and will accept Intel's 5th Generation Haswell Processors. Some of the boards will feature the new M.2 SSD connector and will allow the use of M.2 SSD drives with the boards. "M.2, formerly called "Next Generation Form Factor" (NGFF), is the latest I/O solution of replacing Mini-SATA (abbreviated as mSATA) and breaking through the speed limit of the current SATA3 6Gb/s. Leading by Intel Inc., M.2 technology is based on the PCI Express interface and also compatible with the SATA interface," ASRock said in a release.

Information about ASUS motherboard with upcoming Intel Z97 Chipset was leaked in a China based website. According to the information, ASUS is preparing to release six new motherboards with LGA 1150 socket.

The motherboard models are Maximus VII Hero, Maximus VII Gene, Z97 Sabertooth Mark 1, Z97 Deluxe, Z97-WS and Maximus VII Ranger.

The information also provides the specifications and features that ASUS have implemented on the respected models of the motherboards. As one would expect, the enthusiast class motherboards will be with an array of overclocking features.

GIGABYTE has just taken the wraps off of its new high performance server motherboard, the GA-6PXSVT, the company's first single Socket 2011-based workstation motherboard that features 10GbE.

The GA-6PXSVT supports the Intel Xeon E5-1600 V2 and E5-2600 V2 processors, up to 256GB of ECC memory, and all of the usual features you would find on a high-end workstation motherboard. First we have the single SFP+ 10GbE port that is coupled with two additional GbE ports, making the GA-6PXSVT quite the networking performance powerhouse.

The GA-6PXSVT features Intel's third generation 82599EN 10GbE controller with a low latency SFP+ interface, which means that users benefit from an on-board package which delivers higher bandwidth, lower thermals and footprint, and cost performance compared to the traditional method of adding 10GbE capacity through a PCI-Express expansion card.

ASUS and GIGABYTE Technology made plans to ship over five millon DIY motherboards by first quarter of this year. Both companies have been competing head-to-head in China's DIY PC market for entry-level, mid-end and even high-end models.

Though ASUS' 2014 shipments haven't changed, GIGABYTE has noticed a significant increase, mainly due to increase of demand in towns and cities. ASUS shipped about twenty million seven hundred thousand motherboards during 2013 witnessing a 6.8% decrease compared to the previous year, whereas GIGABYTE shipped twenty million motherboards, a 5.3% bump.

At the same time, sources reported that MSI International, ASRock, Elitegroup, Biostar & Colorful Technology and Development may have its shipments dropped by 10% at the very least.

CES 2014 - GIGABYTE's marketing director, Colin Brix, took a few moments to walk us through the company's new Brix devices. Up first is the new Brix Pro which features Intel's new Iris Pro Integrated Graphics, and is powerful enough to even run Battlefield 4. The Brix Pro is also Gigabytes official entry into the Steam Machine arena and is Valve approved.

We were also shown a Brix device that is coming out this year that features discrete graphics for more GPU processing power. The unnamed device features both Intel Haswell and AMD processors and will have support for NVIDIA GPUs at a later date. GIGABYTE says that the unnamed device will be perfect for LAN parties, or anywhere you need desktop performance in a small, ultra-portable package.

The last Brix device we got a chance to check out is the new Brix NAS device which is code named Brix MAXX. The device has room for up to four 2.5-inch HDDs or SSDs, and is being billed as a home-sized personal cloud storage device. The Brix NAS supports SMBA, DLNA, as well as other server configurations, and features several RAID features. The Brix NAS is the first Brix device to run Android as its main OS, and features apps for your mobile devices for quick file syncing.

Today MSI launched a new variant of its Z87 MPower MAX, the company's flagship LGA1150 motherboard. The new Z87 MPower MAX AC includes an 802.11 ac Wi-Fi interface courtesy of a daughter board that features an Intel communications processor that brings dual-band 802.11 AC Wi-Fi to the popular motherboard.

MSI says that the new Z87 MPower MAX is capable of Wi-Fi speeds up to 867 Mb/s on the 5GHz channel when connected to a compatible router running 802.11 ac. Bluetooth 4.0 is also featured in the new Intel-based daughter board which allows for connectivity of Bluetooth enabled peripherals, accessories and mobile devices. The Z87 MPower MAX AC is a standard ATX form factor motherboard and features all of the same configurations and features of its predecessor, the MSI Z87 MPower MAX which we reviewed last year.

Today BIOSTAR unveiled two new motherboards that it says are the ideal solution for mining Bitcoins. The first board is based on an Intel H81 chipset and supports Intel's socket 1150 CPUs, while the second features an H61B chipset and socket 1155 support. This allows Bitcoin mining using Intel 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation Core processors.

Both of the boards feature PCI-E 3.0 support and include a single 16x slot and 5 PCI-E 1x slots. The Hi-Fi H81S2 V.6.X supports two DDR3 DIMM modules, and connectivity is handled via 2x SATA 3 connectors and 2x SATA 2 connectors. USB 3.0 is featured on two ports while two other ports as well as the USB headers are version 2.0. Gigabit Ethernet is present as well.

The H61B v 6.1 supports socket LGA 1155, and can house up to two DDR3 DIMMs. Four SATA 2 ports are available while all of the on-board USB is version 2.0. Gigabit Ethernet is present as well as on-board VGA graphics and serial out. Load either of these boards up with several AMD Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce GPUs and enjoy all of the bitcoins you can mine!

We're over in chilly Beijing, China at the moment checking out the 2013 Beat It Grand Finals being hosted by MSI. Between CS:GO games, we went down and hit the floor to see what was going on in the few booths that have been set up by the sponsors of the event.

Two items that really got our attention are the new mITX weapons that MSI are showing off that are due to hit in the first week of December. One is the upcoming Z87I Gaming AC motherboard. As the name suggests it's based on the Z87 chipset.

Alongside that we've also got GTX 760 Gaming ITX, a smaller GTX 760 designed to be installed in a MITX case that you can see above. We've got samples of both products already so keep an eye out for a review in early December. We always love those mITX products and we can't wait to see how they perform.