Motherboards - Page 26

We're seeing more and more details from motherboard manufacturers and their upcoming Haswell-capable motherboards, with ASRock walking into the spotlight today with a bunch of details on their entire Z87 lineup of motherboards.

ASRock will be releasing 11 motherboards in the Haswell range, with top three of these boards featuring the Z87 Express chipset: the Z87 Extreme11, Z87 Fatal1ty Professional and Z87 OC Formula. The Z87 Extreme11 is available in the /ac option, which is on-board 802.11ac Wi-Fi for some seriously high-end wireless networking. This is ASRock's best board, and features everything you'd need - Thunderbolt, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, SLI/CrossFire compatibility, and more.

There are a few other boards in this series: the Z87 Extreme 9(/ac), Z87 Extreme6(/ac), Z87 Extreme 4, and the micro-ATX Z87M Extreme4.

PC & Tech Authority have just posted a bunch of pictures of their exclusive look at Gigabyte's Z87X-UD3H motherboard, and boy does it look good. The Haswell-capable board features a slick color scheme consisting of black, grey and blue.

The Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H comes with three full-sized x16 PCIe slots, three x1 PCIe slots, and still, a PCI slot. There's eight SATA ports, 4 DIMM slots, on-board power/reset/CMOS clear buttons, and a SATA power connection that will give the motherboard more power if needed. Gone are the usual molex connectors for some more power, thankfully.

We should know more about this board in the coming weeks leading up to Computex in Taipei.

We had a very nice look at Gigabyte's Z87 G1-Killer motherboard yesterday and now we get to have a glimpse at their UEFI DualBIOS, which is looking absolutely gorgeous. It features the orange and black theme that we know and love from Gigabyte's high-end boards, which looks amazing.

There seems to be something I think Gigabyte should patent here, something along the lines of 'everything but the kitchen sink' when it comes to BIOS options. The new UEFI DualBIOS looks incredibly detailed, and should cater perfectly to enthusiasts and power users. I can't wait to get my hands on a few of these bad boys.

Gigabyte have pushed out a bunch of teaser images on their upcoming Haswell-capable Z87 G1-Killer motherboard. Gigabyte's G1 Killer series is the company's top-tier motherboard, which offers some high-end on-board solutions from companies like Creative and Bigfoot Networks.

What makes this tease very interesting is that the Z87 G1-Killer sports an internal liquid cooling solution, something that has been featured on ASUS' Maximus V Formula. Gigabyte's solution offers both air cooling through the heatsink and liquid cooling through an internally built water channel which transfers the coolant through all-copper made heatpipes. Gigabyte will be offering the board some serious Ultra Durable components, such as IR3550 PowIRstage, 2X Copper PCB, High Capacity Ferrite Core Chokes and more.

Gigabyte's Z87 G1-Killer includes 8 VRM phases on one side of the board, and if we're lucky, we could see 8 more VRMs on the other side of the board, providing a total of 16 VRMs. We should expect the Z87 G1-Killer to ship with Intel XMP profile support, pushing DDR3 right up to 3200MHz. This will be on top of the usual slew of crazy overclocking features that this motherboard is set to include.

We haven't even had our hands grace the next-gen CPU that is Haswell yet, but Intel are already talking about their chipset destined for 2014 - Intel's 9-series chipsets.

These chipsets will support Serial ATA Express, which is based on the PCI Express protocol and will pave the way for some seriously high-bandwidth storage devices. Intel's 9-series chipsets will include core-logic sets such as Z97 and H97, and will support SATA Express by default. There will also be an all-new Intel device protection technology with boot guard built into the chipset, enhancing the security against low-level malware attacks on the upcoming next-gen platform.

What can we expect from SATA Express on Intel's 9-series motherboards? Well, we should see a cost-effective means to deliver interface speeds between 8Gb/s and 16Gb/s compared to the 6Gb/s maximum that the SATA III specification allows now. The specification will define new device and motherboard connects that will support both the current SATA devices, and the new SATA Express devices.

If you've been looking to build yourself a NAS (network attached storage) system, then you might want to stop by Giada's new motherboard, the Giada N70E-DR. The motherboard packs an integrated Celeron C1007U processor, which chews on just 17W of power.

The motherboard can handle native RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 with data security protection and some high-performance Intel 82583V gigabit ethernet ports for some great networking speed and reliability. Also included are some smart hardware monitoring and management capabilities, which allows customers to keep a check on the health of their system.

There are six SATA ports, with two of them being of the SATA 3.0 standard. Two USB 3.0 ports are featured on the Giada N70E-DR for some speedy external connectivity. There's one DDR3 DIMM slot, and a PCI-Express x16 port for some speedy graphics if that's what you want your NAS to be capable of.

We've already seen what ASRock are working on, but what about Gigabyte? They haven't been sleeping by the looks of things, with the new Z87 range of motherboards, built for overclockers, being noticed at CeBIT.

The best of the bunch, the GA-Z87X-OC, is built with a full 8 Phase Solid VRM using DRMOS, International Rectifier MOSFETs, which should give some crazy stability when pushing that overclock. The Z87X-OC includes that sexy orange and black design we've come to know and love from Gigabyte, as well as the usual buttons for enthusiasts on the board - BCLCK, Turbo, Gear, Power switches at the side of DIMM slots, Voltage measuring points, Debug LED and a Dual BIOS switch.

We should expect to see more from Gigabyte at Computex in June, where more consumer-ready boards should be unveiled. There's more in the Z87 range from Gigabyte, with the GA-Z87X-UD5H, GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H and GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H being shown off at Gigabyte's CeBIT 2013 booth.

Yesterday we had a look at a few of ASRock's Haswell-based motherboard offerings, but the pictures weren't too shabby. We're back today with some much better pictures, where we can take a closer look at their upcoming motherboards.

The shots are in perfect detail, of each board - the B85M, H87 Pro4, Z87 Extreme6 and Z87 Pro4-M. We have shots of each, as well as the inputs on the back of each board, let's start with the B85M:

Next up we have the H87 Pro4.

CeBIT 2013 - We are still three months out from Intel's Haswell line of processors hitting retail shelves, but that is not stopping ASRock from unveiling four new LGA1150 motherboards.

The high-end ASRock Z87 Extreme6 is a standard sized ATX motherboard that is equipped with gold capacitors, can support dual channel DDR3 RAM up to 1600MHz, and features two PCI-Express 3.0 slots. It sports 14 USB ports of which six are USB 3.0, 8 SATA 6Gb ports and DVI, D-Sub, HDMI and Display Port.

The Z87 Pro4-M is a MicroATX board that features 100% solid capacitors, one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, support for AMD CrossfireX, multiple monitor support through built in display connectors, and 12 USB ports (six USB 3.0) The Pro4-M also includes six SATA 6Gb ports.

Big news out of Intel today. They are looking to end their desktop motherboard business over the next 3 years. Intel will continue to provide chipsets for third-party manufacturers, but will no longer be producing desktop motherboards. This announcement isn't too surprising, though it was a bit unexpected.

The Intel staff will go to different projects, such as developing the NUC boards and reference boards. Reference boards are often the basis of many third-party designs. Intel plans to stop developing desktop motherboards after the Haswell launch, though all Intel boards will still carry a full warranty and will continue to be supported by Intel.

The socketed CPU design will continue to be available past Broadwell in 2014, though the cadence of release is said to be slower than what we are currently used to. Third-party motherboards should continue to be the high-quality specimens that most of us have come to love.

CES 2013 - Gigabyte is producing two new low-profile mini-ITX boards that are used in All-In-One (AIO) systems. These boards have lower clearance requirements than a normal board and utilize SO-DIMM like a laptop. The back I/O panel is also around half-height and Gigabyte has two identical boards, with the only difference being the chipset.

One board features the B75 and the other features the H77. Both boards are identical in looks, layout, everything, except for this small detail. Gigabyte says they are one of the few, if not the only, company making boards based upon the B75 chipset.

In other Gigabyte news, we reported earlier that Gigabyte is virtually the only motherboard maker putting two Thunderbolt ports onto motherboards. They are showcasing the benefits of this by driving four monitors to make up a 4K resolution output device. We managed to see their display in person and grab an image of it in action:

Quite the juicy rumor for the weekend, where SemiAccurate are reporting that they've heard that ASUS have made an offer to acquire ASRock's motherboard division. If this were to happen, we're looking at ASUS becoming bigger than they already are, and making a bigger threat for the number two in the market, Gigabyte.

ASRock sit at number three, so a combination of number one and three's forces would be quite significant for the market. If it were to happen, we're be looking at ASUS and Gigabyte, followed by the smaller players like MSI, ECS which don't see anywhere near the same numbers as ASUS, Gigabyte or ASRock, and then there's a few much smaller players, too.

If the deal does go through, there will be downstream effects to many of the other companies and suppliers to these companies - so it would cause quite the stir. But, with Intel talking about making motherboards pretty much redundant, could we see this as a preemptive move from ASUS to take more control of the already tight market?

Normally a DigiTimes report is preceded with the words "RumorTT", but this seems more serious, and more real than most of DigiTimes' reports as it makes a lot of sense. Intel is preparing the launch of their next-generation Haswell-based processors for sometime in 2013, and they'll baked into tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, and servers - nearly every segment of the market.

But, Haswell is designed by Intel to integrate functions such as power phase control - something overclockers use, into the CPU itself. This is of course worrying motherboard makers, as the overclocking market is a big thing right now, and a lot of players have boards designed purely for overclocking in mind. We're talking of nearly all big players - Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, ASRock. This won't spell the end of their businesses, but it will most likely see a change in direction of how we see them sell their boards, and what features will set them apart from the others.

Intel won't push these changes into Haswell straight away, but will instead bake more chipset functions into the CPU over time. Right now, we're seeing motherboard players changing gears and pushing USB-based features, Thunderbolt, BIOS firmware features, and more in order to not feel stale, or similar to similarly priced motherboards from competitors.

ASRock's Z77 OC Formula has been used with an Intel Core i7 3770K and the help of legendary overclocker Nick Shih, which has reached an insane 7.136GHz. This has given ASRock the number one spot on HWBOT, as well as setting a new overclocking world record. The man himself had the following to say about the achievement:

ASRock's Z77 OC Formula is ASRock's first motherboard designed for overclocking, featuring three Formula kits. These three kits are the Power Kit, which delivers "smooth and stable current with Digi Power, DSM, PAC, MFC and the 12+4 power phase design". Next up we have the Cooling Kit, which provides some great cooling, sporting the Twin-Power Cooling Heatsink, 8-layer PCB design with 4 sets of 2oz copper inner layers and GELID Solution GC-Extreme Thermal Compound. Finally, we have the Connector Kit, which includes Hi-Density Power Connectors and 15μ Gold Fingers.

Earlier on today we were invited to the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei where we were told we would see the Taiwanese motherboard maker and its in-house professional overclocker HiCookie try to set a new world record for the Intel Core i7 3770K processor.

Overclocking was done on the upcoming GA-Z77X-UP7 motherboard that is due to be released this coming Monday - GIGABYTE at the time of writing were not prepared to comment on pricing as it is yet to be 100% confirmed. However, you can expect the price to be fairly high as this is a board designed for overclockers and it has plenty of top notch features to help overclockers around the world set new performance records. In the video above I mentioned that the Z77X-UP7 is much like a Formula One car in its design theory. Every little tweak has been included and high-end components such as 32 CPU phases are included to help set said new records.

Besides the massive amount of power phases and its all-digital power system, GIGABYTE has included some new handy switches this time around. There are two switches at the southern end of the motherboard. One is to control which BIOS is used (master or backup) since this board like all other GIGABYTE boards support Dual BIOS. The second switch disables the Dual BIOS function as sometimes overclockers get into a kind of loop issue that has the motherboard looping between both BIOSes to figure out which one to use.

Earlier on today we visited the ASRock headquarters here in Taipei where we caught up with Chris Lee and Nick Shih who introduced to their latest motherboard, the ASRock Z77 OC Formula.

Nick Shih joined ASRock some seven months ago and joined the Taiwanese motherboard maker team with his past professional overclocking experience to help the company create a new motherboard that is designed purely for overclocking and enthusiasts and it has performance written all over it. He worked closely with ASRock engineers to create what they vision to be the best OC motherboard in the world.

In the above video Chris and Nick do a good job of telling us about the motherboard and why it's good for overclocking. Features such as premium chokes and caps that can handle various impedance frequencies are used along with a new digital PWM and more. Heck, ASRock even throw in a tube of GEIL thermal paste which is a first as far as I know and another feature I personally liked was the see-through PCB that shows each layer of the eight layer copper PCB.

ASRock makes quality motherboards that are often priced with budget boards. The latest edition to the ASRock lineup has been exclusively designed by Nick Shih, a leading overclocker. The board is designed for the high-end enthusiast market, and is "full to the brim with features" and is sure to perform beautifully.

"My vision for the OC Formula Brand is to allow overclockers to smash the overclocking limits effortlessly." said Nick Shih, OC Mater of ASRock. "Z77 OC Formula is just the one you've always expected. I live for challenges and welcome OC rockers to take my OC crown!"

James Lee, V.P. of ASRock Sales and Marketing:

If you thought Gigabyte's motherboards were good, you ain't seen nothing yet. How would Gigabyte best show off what 32-phases of power regulation can do? In Gigabyte's case, you grab two 1200W power supplies, wire up the motherboard to handle three DC load testers, and throw 2000W of power through the CPU socket, that's what.

Gigabyte says that this is enough power to power 25 of Intel's Core i7-3770K CPUs. But, you might already know you won't ever need to draw down 2000W, but the company is simply showing off how good their new Ultra Durable 5 motherboard design using PowIRstage's is compared to previous boards.

The demonstration is meant to whet the appetite of enthusiasts for their upcoming Z77X-UP7. It's also the first sneak peak at the final board design, which has changed slightly from the last board seen at Computex, now sporting a gorgeous black and orange look, with a new heatsink design.

Computex 2012 - Walking around the halls today we spotted a motherboard with the model name "Hacker" and it made me stop and pay attention.

The company in question here is Wibtek, a long time Chinese motherboard producer who has only just entered the retail motherboard market at the end of last year. We often walk the show floor each year and see loads of motherboard makers, but they usually don't interest that much with their non-enthusiast entries.

Wibtek was different though as they did get our attention for the Hacker Z77 and Hacker Z75 based motherboards. This is Wibtek's first attempt and creating an enthusiast motherboard and by the looks of things, they are off to a fairly positive start. They are marketing their Z77 board as offering easy overclocking and impeccable performance. They add in an Auto-Overclocking Button with customised software along with a Hacker IC which is something we need to check out more before we can comment on it properly.

Computex 2012 - Walking around the Computex Nangang halls today we ran into Nick Shih from ASRock which is a good thing considering he and ASRock just announced their newest product, the Z77 OC Formula.

We gave you a quick preview of the Z77 OC Formula a couple of days ago, but it's best to let Nick give us a personal introduction as well as some details on some of the 2D world records they've already broken.

Watch the video above to learn more about this new extreme overclocking motherboard from ASRock. Think 7GHz Ivy Bridge and G.Skill RAM running at 3000MHz and MSI's Lightning video card running at insane speeds. Tasty!