Motherboards - Page 18

GIGABYTE teased all with their huge motherboard capable of overclocking Intel's 28-core monster CPU to 5GHz, let's see what was hiding under the heat sinks and find out more about the CPU and motherboard.

There has been a lot of chatter about Intel's debut of their 5GHz 28-core beast, and while that CPU is probably a modified Xeon Platinum 8180, Intel nor the vendors would give us any information on the CPU or even motherboard. However, we can learn a lot from the motherboard used to demo the chip to the world. For starters, let's get this out of the way; yes, that chip was without a doubt overclocked. The VRM on the motherboard is a monster, and designed to support much more than Intel's "300W" TDP number (the Platinum 8180 is rated for 205W TDP).

For reference, Intel's 18-core 7980XE can easily pull 500W when overclocked to 4.5GHz. So add the increased leakage from taking more than 50% more cores all 500MHz higher, and add to that the decrease in VRM efficiency due to increased phase count, and we think the VRM could be pulling 1.2-1.8 KW. We heard rumors of the 7980XE pulling up to 1000W under LN2, so we don't think our numbers are too far off. We also heard that Intel was hitting the limits of physics, and we aren't just talking about upgrading their circuit breakers.

ASUS has just unveiled its monster new crypto mining motherboard, with the introduction of the H370 Mining Master motherboard, which can handle 20 graphics cards for the ultimate mining motherboard.

ASUS has learned from its first B350 Mining Expert motherboard, with the new H370 Mining Master motherboard simplifying the entire mining experience by letting USB riser cables connect directly into the PCB. Glorious. This means you can run 20 graphics cards at once, without as many cables and headaches - and trust me, there are lots of headaches with super-crazy mining setups.

The H370 Mining Master motherboard has mining-specific tweaks that ASUS has performed to the board, another nice touch, with one of them being the GPU state detection before the board boots, as you can see in the image above.

Intel and AMD are preparing new chipsets that are sure to confuse customers in the coming months, with AMD planning their beefed up Z490 chipset while Intel do the same with a suped up Z390 chipset.

AMD's upcoming Z490 chipset will be very similar to the just-released Z470 chipset, except the new Z490 chipset will rock new PCIe lanes when it drops in June. We should expect an 8C/16T variant of Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs, so think the Core i7-8790K, which will debut alongside the refreshed Z390 chipset.

Intel will be keeping its HEDT chipset around for a while, with X299 staying with us through 2H 2018.

AMD is currently in the process of launching their new flagship X470 chipset with the Pinnacle Ridge-based Ryzen 2000 series processors, but now a mysterious Z490 chipset has been teased.

VideoCardz reports on a slide that was allegedly posted on the PCEva forums, where it shows a presentation of GIGABYTE's AORUS X470 motherboards, showing the differences between some of the chipsets and then the mysterious Z490 (not X490, but Z490) chipset.

The purported Z490 chipset is identical to the X470 chipset except that it rocks 4 additional PCIe 3.0 lanes, something that would be great for multi-GPU users who want PCIe lanes for precious graphics cards, and multiple super-fast NVMe M.2 SSDs that need PCIe lanes to drive their insane speeds.

BIOSTAR has accidentally leaked out Intel's upcoming Z390 chipset, with an early reveal of their own Z390 RACING GT3 and GT5 motherboards with a manual on the B360 RACING GT3S leaking and teasing the Z390 as well.

If we're seeing manuals on these motherboards, it means that the new/refreshed Z390 motherboards are imminent. The manual can even be downloaded from BIOSTAR's website, but we don't know much about the Z390 chipset at all. We do know that BIOSTAR's new motherboard has support for CPUs at up to 95W TDP, which might "indirectly confirm the maximum TDP of 8-core Coffee Lake-S CPU" according to VideoCardz.

If there was a teeny tiny Ryzen 2000-capable motherboard that wins best all-round looks, it would go to the ASUS ROG STRIX X470-I Mini-ITX, which looks awesome.

The upcoming ASUS ROG STRIX X470-I Mini-ITX is a powerhouse motherboard offering a hidden M.2 slot, two DDR4 DIMM slots, and a built-in Wi-Fi adapter.

ASUS includes the usual full-length PCIe x16 slot, so you can power your new AMD Ryzen 7 2700X with a Radeon RX Vega 64 (yeah, probably not), or a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

ASUS is preparing the ROG Crosshair VII motherboard with AMD's new X470 chipset, ready for the launch of the new Ryzen 2000 series CPUs that are right around the corner.

The new ASUS ROG Crosshair VII motherboard rocks a new VRM heat sink, a pre-installed I/O shield, power on/rest buttons have been moved next to the DIMM slots, while we now have a M.2 slot with a dedicated heat sink to keep those super-fast NVMe drives from getting too hot.

ASUS have changed things up between the previous-gen ROG Crosshair VI and the new ROG Crosshair VII, with the latter featuring less SATA 6Gbps ports with 6 drives capable on the new board compared to 8 on the former. The I/O bracket features 12 x USB ports (with a mix of 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1) compared to 14 on the previous-gen port, but the new board now sports a PS/2 port.

In a world that is dominated with performance and mining builds, GIGABYTE haven't forgotten about the little guy, in this case small-form factor PC's. GIGABYTE have announced the release of the new generation Gemini Lake based J/N series motherboards that feature an on-board CPU, humidity protected glass fabric PCBs, long acting capacitors, anti-surge ICs, low resistance MOSFETs, and Ultra Durable components.

"Following the announcement of the newest Intel Pentium Silver and Celeron Processors, GIGABYTE developed a series of motherboards that truly reflects our excellent ability to combine the best of motherboard technology with Intel processor architecture," GIGABYTE stated.

Powered by the latest Intel Pentium Silver and Intel Celeron processors, GIGBYTE's latest J/N series motherboards also includes support for M.2 SATA SSD, UDIMM DDR4 2400MHz memory, HDMI 2.0 4K and utilizes fanless cooling technology to provide the perfect solution for always-on, compact builds.

CES 2018 - At CES 2018, SuperMicro's subsidiary, SuperO, showed us a glimpse of their C9X299-PG300. The new C9X299-PG300 will replace any X299 motherboard we might have showed you at Computex, and will be available shortly. The new motherboard has enhanced VRM and M.2 cooling, as well as simple and straightforward aesthetics.

The motherboard's revamped VRM supports 300W TDP CPUs, and it's designed for overclocking. It features eight DDR4 DIMMs rated at up to 4000Mhz+, and you can load it up with 128GB of DDR4. The motherboard features four x16 PCI-E 3.0 slots, but bandwidth will vary depending on which CPU you use. We also find six SATA6Gb/s ports, two U.2 slots, two x4 PCI-E 3.0 M.2 lots, 10Gbit LAN, 1Gbit Intel LAN, and two customizable RGB LED headers.

CES 2018 - ASRock's commitment to the small form factor PC is unwavering, and at CECS 2018 they showed off two new Micro-ATX motherboards. The X299 chipset mainly serves Intel's X-Series of processors while the X399 chipset serves AMD's Thread Ripper CPUs. As such, they are high-end desktop chipsets loaded with features and more importantly, traces. Putting either on a micro-ATX motherboard is no easy feat, but ASRock is up to the task.

The X299M Extreme 4 offers four DIMMs for quad channel memory and support for up to 4200MHz+ DIMMs. It uses an XXL Aluminum Alloy heat sink that cools down its insane VRM. You do get SLI and CrossFireX support along with six SATA6G/s ports, two Ultra M.2 slots, two USB 3.1 ports, six USB 3.0 ports, Intel Gbit LAN, and 7.1 HD audio. ASRock also includes RGB LED capabilities.

Thread Ripper's CPU is huge, so it is quite shocking to see a micro-ATX X399 motherboard. The new motherboard supports quad channel memory support, three Ultra M.2 slots, eight SATA6Gb/s slots, a U.2 port, three x16 PCI-E 3.0 slots, 10 USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 ports, dual Gbit LAN, WIFI, and 7.1 HD audio. It also uses a giant aluminum heat sink to cool down a powerful VRM, so you can overclock your stealth compact ThreadRipper rig.

CES 2018 - NZXT is mostly known for chassis and cooling solutions, but starting with the new N7 Z370, the company is getting into motherboards.

NZXT's first jump into the motherboard market comes with the N7 Z370, a $300 motherboard built on the Z370 chipset that sports a digital fan controller, RGB colors, and an all-metal frame that's specifically designed to compliment snazzy builds. The N7 Z370 comes in both black and white, and its full suite of profiles can be controlled by NZXT's CAM software, including RGB effects, fan curves, and more.

"Leveraging our years of experience as professional PC builders, we've designed the N7 motherboard with a completely new approach. In the face of increasing complexity in the PC gaming market, we want to make building easier and more enjoyable, with the N7 as a cornerstone for this new experience. Everything you need--from easy layout and obvious connections to digital fan control and RGB lighting--is included. We've also designed a completely unique motherboard cover so it's both beautiful and powerful. You can't build a quieter, better-looking system as easily as you can with our new N7 motherboard." says Johnny Hou, NZXT's founder, and CEO.

CES 2018 - GIGABYTE had a secret motherboard on hand at their CES 2018 ballroom, and we got a sneak peak so we could show you what they have in store for 2018. The AMD AM4 X470-based Aorus Gaming 7 is totally redesigned compared to their X370 Aorus Gaming 7.

The new motherboard has two M.2 slots, one routed to the CPU at x4 PCI-E 3.0 and one to the chipset at x4 PCI-E 2.0, both of them have heat sinks. The motherboard will support current and future AM4 CPUs, but should be compatible with Ryzen-2000 series CPUs/APUs out of the box.

Surprisingly, GIGABYTE decided to go back to the tried-and-true fin-type heat sink, which offers maximum cooling efficiency because of its maximized surface area. The new X470 motherboard features a 10+2 phase VRM controlled by an IR35201 PWM controller. Each power stage uses IR3553 40A PowIRstages for AMD's next gen Zen+ and current CPUs.

AMD is preparing their next-gen Ryzen processors for 2018, but we're already hearing about the new 400-series chipset that will power next-gen motherboards thanks to a new post on PCI-SIG.

The upcoming Zen+/Ryzen 2000 range is also known as Pinnacle Ridge, and will be an upgrade of Zen 1 made on 12nm. AMD will give us higher clock speeds and improved power efficiency, which is always welcomed. Zen 2 will be saved for the Ryzen 3000 series of processors, which will offer even more improvements over Zen as it will be baked onto the super-delicious 7nm node.

AMD's upcoming Summit Ridge 300 series chipset was listed on PCI-SIG in January 2016, but now we have the new codename Promontory chipset listed on PCI-SIG, which was added on December 19, 2017. This new chipset teased "AMD 400 Series Chipsets" which will include X470, B450, and A420 series motherboards.

Intel is on a rampage of releasing new CPU architectures and motherboard chipsets to go with them, but if you thought we were another year away from a big release, you are wrong. Intel is ramping up for the next Z390 launch, something that should be revealed in early 2018.

The new Intel Z390 chipset has been spotted in SiSoftware's database, and should launch side-by-side with a new range of 4/6/8-core processors that will need to compete with the new threat of AMD's upcoming next-gen Ryzen CPUs in the first half of 2018. Intel is building the new Z390 chipset to handle the new 8-core CPUs they'll unveil, which should fill out the Coffee Lake-S family of processors.

SuperMicro is the board partner that the new Z390 chipset has been spotted on, with their SuperMicro Z7Z390-PGW motherboard spotted on SiSoftware's database. The CPU wasn't detected, which means that the motherboard is an early engineering sample that isn't capable of being detected by SiSoftware yet, or the board is so new SiSoftware is having problems with it.

GIGABYTE have announced their latest Z370 chipset based motherboard, the compact GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI motherboard. Designed for a mini-ITX form factor, the GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI motherboard is a versatile, yet powerful motherboard that is optimized to support Intel's 8th Generation Core Processors.

GIGABYTE have ensured that performance isn't compromised thanks to support for dual-channel DDR4-4600MHz (OC), dual M.2 PCIe slots, dual Intel GbE LAN, dual band 802.11AC wireless and seven USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. This motherboard also boasts onboard DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0a outputs, both are capable of HDR video with HDMI 2.0a able to provide cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio to provide the ultimate viewing experience.

What motherboard isn't complete without RGB lighting? GIGABYTE aren't novices in this department and have included RGB Fusion technology, this allows for customization of up to 300 individual LED's. This software allows you to connect 5V or 12V LED strips and customize each individual LED to suit your preference, this means you can alter the color and brightness of each of the 300 LED's. For overclocking, GIGABYTE have included an Intersil Hybrid Digital VRM design, this design ensures power is distributed effectively to create stable overclocks, XMP profiles is also provided for memory overclocking.

ASUS has just announced their new dual Xeon workstation motherboard, with the introduction of the WS C621E SAGE motherboard. ASUS' new offering is for high-end workstation users, who want a mind blowing amount of CPU grunt.

The new ASUS WC 621E SAGE motherboard rocks two LGA 3647 sockets, which will work with Intel's new Scalable family of Xeon CPUs. The board can support 205W TDP processors, which let it drive 2 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processors with 28C/56T for a total of 56C/112T. There's also 4-way GPU support for both NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire.

We have 12 x DDR4 DIMMs that support up to 768GB of DDR4 RAM, 7 x PCIe 3.0 x16 ports, with the full x16 PCIe 3.0 bandwidth required. There are 10 x SATA III ports, 4 x U.2 connectors (32GB/sec) and a single M.2 Socket 3 connector, all backed up with out-of-the-box support for NVMe PCIe SSD RAID 0. ASUS also includes 2 x GbE ports, Realtek 7.1-channel audio, and a bunch of USB 3.1 Gen 2/Gen 1, and USB 2.0 ports.

ASUS ROG is bringing Ryzen to Mini-ITX with their latest motherboards, ROG Strix X370-I Gaming and Strix B350-I Gaming motherboards for AM4 sockets. Catering for small-form-factor Ryzen builds, these ASUS ROG motherboards are nearly identical and are packed full of cutting-edge features like their full-sized counterparts including RGB lighting, M.2 SSD heat sink, liquid cooling ready and a host of other features for your AMD Ryzen build.

ASUS Maximus Impact series showcased improved audio with a dedicated riser card, and the Strix X370-I and B350-I Gaming go one step further with an M.2 Audio Combo card that contains both SupremeFX sound and M.2 storage. As for overlocking, these motherboards feature unlocked multipliers, six-phase VRM design and support for DDR4-3600 memory. To make overclocking even easier, ASUS ROG have introduced exclusive 5-Way Optimization technology, this intelligent auto-tuning technology automatically overclocks the CPU and configures the cooling performance based on the components of your build.

Both the ROG Strix X370-I Gaming and Strix B350-I Gaming motherboards will be available late October.

BIOSTAR have unleashed their flagship Z370 motherboard, and it sounds like an exotic supercar, the RACING Z370GT7. Supporting the latest 8th generation Intel Core processors and DDR4-3866 memory, this motherboard is aimed at enthusiasts who like to go extreme with their overclocks, modifications and designs of their builds.

Finished in a luxurious black color theme with golden highlights spread across the design of the board, the RACING Z370GT7 is also able to satisfy RGB fanatics thanks to utilizing BIOSTAR's Advanced VIVID LED DJ that can provide up to 10 flashing modes. As with any flagship product, BIOSTAR have included some new toys with the RACING Z370GT7 including smart A.I FAN, reinforced PCI-E slots and dual Intel Optane-ready M.2 slots. A.I Fan allows for complete fan control via an individual fan controller for each connected fan, this means your fans will adjust their speeds to maintain cool temperatures of your hardware. RACING Z370GT7 boasts dual gold M.2 heat sinks that allow for ultra-high cooling efficiency, this protects and prolongs the like of your M.2 slot.

BIOSTAR RACING Z370GT7 rear I/O ports include legacy PS/2 connector support, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Port, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C Port, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Port 2 x USB 2.0 Port, 1 x HDMI Connector, 1 x DVI-D Connector, 1 x RJ-45 Port and 6 x Audio Connectors.

The amount of drama surrounding Intel's recent launch of their Coffee Lake/8th generation CPU architecture and the new Z370 chipset has been astounding, and it just got a lot more interesting.

ASUS ROG motherboard Product Manager, Andrew Wu, confirmed with Bit-Tech that Intel's previous-gen Z270 chipset is compatible with Coffee Lake CPUs, with Wu saying it would require a small change "depending on Intel's decision". Bit-Tech asked if it was a "physical limitation", but Wu replied saying "Not really. It [the power delivery] makes a little bit of difference, but not much".

Then the big question: "so if you wanted and Intel let you, you could make Z270 compatible", to which Wu replied: "Yes, but you also require an upgrade from the ME (Management Engine) and a BIOS update. Intel somehow has locked the compatibility". There you have it folks, Intel is locking users out of upgrading to Coffee Lake on their current Z270 boards, by forcing users to buy a Z370 motherboard.

MSI have announced their new motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper builds, the MSI X399 SLI PLUS. MSI's latest motherboard is an optimized workstation and an excellent choice for professionals looking for performance and stability that we've came to expect from MSI.

Featuring a slick full-black color scheme and a first for MSI's PRO series, Mystic Light RGB, the X399 SLI PLUS can provide impressive performance and style that is customizable by the user. MSI have provided USB 3.1, M.2 SSD support and STEEL ARMOR PCI-E slots that have all been designed and thoroughly tested to achieve quality standards and are geared for longevity and performance. Capable of supporting quad-channel DDR4-3600 memory, 4 xPCI-E 3.0 x16 slots and backed with impressive performance features include DDR4 Boost, Turbo M.2 with RAID support, Audio Boost, X-Boost, Network Manager and many more, the X399 SLI PRO provides impressive compatibility and features.

With any workstation orientated build, stable and fast networking is paramount. MSI have optimized the X399 SLI PLUS for professional and multimedia use and is equipped with a high quality Gigabit network solution and Audio Boost 4. MSI haven't provided pricing or availability yet, but expect this motherboard to be released Q4 2017.