SuperMicro has made a surprising move that we might not feel for another 6+ months or so, but the company has announced plans of returning to the gaming and high-end motherboard business this year.

The company has found success over the last couple of decades making some of the highest quality motherboards on the market, filling some of the most important systems in the world. Governments and companies that require 24/7 stability and 100% uptime will look to SuperMicro's various products and technologies, and while over the last few years the company has dipped its toes into the consumer/gaming motherboard market, it hasn't made a huge splash.

That is all about to change as a journey that started in 2016 and has already provided some fruit from the seed with a few gaming-focused motherboards, but nothing to compete against ASUS and GIGABYTE. SuperMicro VP Vik Malyala recently talked with KitGuru during a recent visit to their Silicon Valley-based HQ, where Malyala said the company is focused on making gaming-class motherboards that will compete with ASUS Maximus and GIGABYTE AORUS gaming motherboards, with expansions being made to SuperMicro's engineering division so they can tackle the new market they're pushing into.

GIGABYTE is reportedly preparing to cull its motherboard workforce by 5-10% over lower motherboard sales, with shipments of motherboards dropping year-over-year.

The company is better preparing itself for 2019 to hit a sales target of 10 million motherboards, which is keeping its head above water compared to 2018 where it sold 11.4 million motherboards, 12.6 million in 2017, and down from the much larger 16 million shipments in 2016.

DigiTimes is reporting that GIGABYTE will lay staff off from its sales and marketing departments of its motehrboard division, but the VGA side of things will be left untouched. GIGABYTE's graphics card sales aren't being hurt that badly with 3.5 million graphics cards sold in 2018, the same as in 2016.

AMD will be launching its new Zen 2-based range of processors in the coming months, where we should expect a huge launch during Computex 2019 in June, and now ASRock is feeling a little cheeky with an early listing of their X570 motherboards listed with the EEC.

The new X570 chipset will feature PCIe 4.0 connectivity for the next wave of GPUs, 10GbE (and 100GbE) network controllers, new SSDs (that can hit 4-5GB/sec) and more. The big deal with X570 is that it will be the chipset that should launch side-by-side with the Zen 2 CPUs that AMD is making on the new 7nm node that will deliver some large performance improvements.

AMD's upcoming Zen 2 processors will launch as the Ryzen 3000 series, but we could expect ASRock to release these motherboards earlier, too.

• ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming X
• ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 6
• ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4
• ASRock X570 Extreme4
• ASRock X570 Taichi
• ASRock X570 Pro4
• ASRock X570 Pro4 R2.0
• ASRock X570M Pro4
• ASRock X570M Pro4 R2.0

CES 2019 - ASUS has chosen the Consumer Electronics Show as the time to launch its new ROG series motherboards, both prepared for respective HEDT processors from AMD in the new Ryzen Threadripper 2000 series and the Intel Core-X range.

The new motherboards are redesigned in a few ways including power delivery, but this is the first time ASUS has stepped up to the HEDT motherboard mantle with similar features on both of the X399 and X299 motherboards which is a great things to see. Both boards support up to 128GB of DDR4 and support 3-way SLI and CFX multi-GPU configurations and a boat load of connectivity, features, and other technologies.

Supermicro isn't a name you typically find at the top of the extreme overclocking rankings over at HWBot, but today is different. Using a Supermicro C9Z390-PGW, user "Superm" submitted the highest LN2 9900K frequency world record, at 7.511GHz. While there is one score roughly 100MHz higher, that result uses Liquid Helium, which has a boiling point of -268C, which is much colder than the -196C liquid nitrogen can achieve.

The best part about this news is that the C9Z390-PGW is a six phase motherboard, without any of that twin or doubler stuff. Just six chokes (inductors) and six Infineon integrated power stages controlled by a Primarion digital PWM. If that doesn't yell quality over quantity, we don't know what does.

You can find our review of the motherboard here. The motherboard features a 6+2 phase VRM, with 6 for the CPU and 2 for the iGPU. The digital PWM controller is the Primarion PXE1610 and the power stages are Infineon TDA21232, which we figure are rated around 55A each, and then six Vitec 66A power inductors are used. While visiting Supermicro's HQ last month, I had a chance to talk with their engineers about their VRM. I was originally a bit wary of the motherboard featuring just six phases for such a power hungry S-SKU CPU, but they assured me not to worry, and when I did my review I was shocked that it handled the 9900K with ease.

GIGABYTE has just unveiled its latest AORUS motherboard just in time for the holidays, with the new Z390 AORUS Xtreme Waterforce ready to dip its toes into some water cooling goodness on a new Intel Core i9-9900K processor.

The new motherboard is for liquid cooling enthusiasts to push their CPUs to the limit, as well as everything else on the motherboard. It bursts out of the game with a gigantic monoblock that's pre-fitted to the motehrboard. This monoblock goes from the CPU socket through the power delivery part of the board, and the Z390 chipset itself.

The company is using a plastic cover close to the PCI Express slots, with metal heat sinks keeping the M.2 SSDs cool.

You'll be fine powering and overclocking the new Core i9-9900K to its limits with the Z390 AORUS Xtreme Waterforce motherboard, as there are dual 8-pin power connectors. There's also 16 IR Digital VRMs, while the PWM design packs 16 TDA21462 60A MOSFETs and 8 IR3599 Phase Doublers.

ASRock has just added another motherboard into its HEDT line up, with its first X399-based motherboard in its Phantom Gaming range. The new ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 motherboard is similar to ASRock's current X399 FATAL1TY, with some wicked styling and packed with features.

The new board takes a helluva lot of RAM with 8 x DDR4 DIMMs that see the ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 motherboard supporting up to 128GB of DDR4 at up to 3400MHz with specific DDR4 kits.

It supports 3-way SLI (2-way Turing) and 3-way CrossFire, if you want to go down the multi-GPU route with a Ryzen Threadripper CPU. There's a bunch of USB 3.0 ports, USB 3.1, dual gigabit Ethernet, RGBs, and more.

Supermicro just launched four Z390 motherboards that are available to purchase as of today, with the fully loaded C9Z390-PGW leading the pack.

The mini-ITX C9Z390-CG-IW, the ATX C9Z390-CG, the loaded ATX C9Z390-CGW, and the fully loaded ATX C9Z390-PGW for those who want the most feature loaded Z390 we have yet to see. The high-end C9Z390-PGW features the iconic PEX8747, which is now sold by Broadcom and can increase PCI-E lane count from the CPU by 100%. We get a total of 32 PCI-E 3.0 lanes attached to the chip, which is then attached to the CPU, and this will let you run two cards at x16/x16 or all slots at x8/x8/x8/x8 among other configurations. Supermicro has also revamped their UEFI BIOS, and they offer their SuperO Booster application that allows for simple and easy to use Windows based overclocking, fan control, and RGB LED control.

Now that Intel has made its next-gen Skylake-X processors official, the flagship Core i9-9980XE will find the perfect home in the beyond enthusiast motherboard from ASUS.

The new ASUS ROG Dominus Extreme is a one of the highest-end motherboards I've ever seen, with an unbelievable amount of power and features crammed into a huge Super ETX form factor motherboard. Not only does it support the 18C/36T processor from Intel, but even the new 28C/56T processor in the form of the new Xeon W-3175W processor.

ASUS' new ROG Dominus Extreme motherboard uses the same LGA 3647 socket, but it amps things up in every single other area. Here's what to expect:

• Designed for Intel Skylake-X 28 core CPU: with 32 power phases, dual 24-pin, quad 8-pin, dual 6-pin 12V power connectors that deliver industry-leading power efficiency
• Quad Strength Graphic Power: 4-Way PCI-E Gen3 x16 link supporting NVIDIA GeForce SLI, NVIDIA NVLink and AMD CrossFireX on demand
• Built for High-Performance Networking: Featuring onboard Aquantia AQC-107 10Gbps LAN, Intel I219-LM GIGABYTE LAN, Intel AC-9260 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and ROG GameFirst technology
• 5-Way Optimization featuring Auto-Tuning and FanXpert 4: Provides automatic overclocking profiles for maximum OC performance while 14 PWM fan headers ensure support for dynamic system cooling
• Unmatched Personalization: with 1.77" color LiveDash OLED, full aluminum body cover, backplate armor, and ASUS exclusive AURA Sync RGB lighting
• ROG Gaming Audio: SupremeFX S1220 teamed with Sonic Studio III, cast an aural landscape that draws you deeper into the action.

MSI had its turn just before with their new Z390 motherboards led by the flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE motherboard, but now it's time for ASUS to shine in the light with their Z390 motherboards and the flagship Z390 ROG Maximus XI.

The new ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI CODE motherboard with an absolutely huge heat sink that spreads from the first to second x16 PCIe port and over the Z390 chipset, edging to the 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots. It looks glorious as well, with some awesome RGB-lit start/reset buttons next the DIMMs. It requires an 8+6-pin power at the top, and is ready for the flagship Core i9-9900K processor.

This motherboard is the new ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI, and you can see that there's some EK Water Blocks cooling above the CPU, with the same behemoth of a heat sink on the board. Looks great IMO, even in black and white as a preview image.