Introduction

Sapphire has really started to step outside its comfort zone in the last few months and so far has seen some good success with it. The mini PC that Sapphire label the Edge-HD was welcomed by us when we reviewed it here, and their step into the more enthusiast driven motherboards was also received well when we looked at their X58 offering at the start of the year here.

Outside of these little endeavors, though, we continue to see the company go strong in the video card market which has no doubt been their bread and butter for years. Every good video card needs a good motherboard, though, and Sapphire figure why not let it be their motherboard?

While Sapphire did a good job with the X58 chipset, we indeed wondered how they'd go when it came to the newer P67 one. While most will argue that the X58 is the much better platform with Triple Channel memory and proper x16 / x16 lane setups, the P67 platform brings a breath of fresh air into the computer rooms of budding overclockers and general enthusiasts everywhere thanks to its great overclocking ability on the Intel i7 2600k processor.

With some extremely strong options already available, the question is, should the Pure Black P67 Hydra from Sapphire be one we should look at? Well, there's only one way to find out, but before we look at the performance side of things let's first have a much closer look at what exactly the board has to offer.

The Package

Checking out the box design, it's similar to that of the X58 we looked at earlier in the year. As for what's inside the box, there's not a whole lot going on. We've got a manual and driver CD along with our back I/O plate and five SATA cables.