Motherboards - Page 27

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!

Computex 2012 - Sitting in the corner of the ROG booth amongst a bunch of other motherboards we found the new Crosshair V Formula-Z, a refresh of the popular 990FX motherboard from ASUS that we know as the Crosshair V Formula. Looking at it you could easily find yourself thinking that it's just the regular non-Z version, but if we look a bit closer we can notice a few things.

One of the first comes with the removal of the legacy PCI slot that was present. That has now been swapped out for a PCIe slot. The audio side of things has also got an upgrade thanks to the addition of SupremeFX III now being present on the board.

Along with that ASUS said that they've also just done some overall tweaking to the board to increase the overclocking ability while we can also see the layout has slightly changed with the power and reset buttons being moved from the bottom of the board to the top with the LED Debug readout also being present now.

Computex 2012 - One of the most insane (and that's a good thing) things we've seen at Computex so far is the Zeus concept X79 motherboard.

If someone tried to sell you a motherboard without any PCI Express slots, what would you say to them? Go jump in the lake or let me give it a try. ASUS has been known for some pretty whacky concept designs in previous years, but this one takes the cake for creativity.

Onboard you get two GeForce GPUs operating in SLI mode. That's right, the motherboard comes with the GPU right on the board. This is rather creative and all, but what happens when the next GPU upgrade comes out? Are you expected to pull out the solder gun and install them yourself? Obviously not, but it's still a pretty cool idea none the less.

Computex 2012 - On Monday we managed to get some video time with MSI's brand new MPower Big Bang motherboards, which claim to change the game of overclocking. They are said to offer higher performance, water cooling support and more stable power.

We saw two new boards that we haven't seen before and they are the Z77 MPower and the X79 MPower. As you can probably tell by the model names the first is based on the Intel Z77 Express chipset for Ivy Bridge processors and the second is based on the older X79 chipset for Sandy Bridge-E processors.

Sadly at the time we didn't have many details on hand to give to you, but at least in the video above you get a good close up look at these two boards as well as the Big Bang XPower II which you may have already seen before now.

Computex 2012 - Again we walking the hall of Computex Nangang early we manage to bring you another exclusive and this time it is our very first and quick look at the upcoming ASRock Z77 OC Formula.

This is ASRock's first motherboard that designed especially for overclockers and it has a lot of design influence by new star recruit Nick Shih who really only joined the Taiwanese motherboard maker not that long ago. The board features a rather stylish black and yellow color theme which did remind me fairly quickly of something that you'd see in the Transformers movie.

Not that the color and resemblance is of any real importance as Nick Shih is a very well-known overclocker who knows his stuff and judging by Nick's signature on the PCB, a lot of his time and effort has gone into working with ASRock engineers to produce a board with his name on it. Besides the apparent overclockability of the Z77 OC Formula, the one big thing that excited me was that fact that this motherboard has no less than 10 USB 3.0 ports onboard.

Computex 2012 - We spent quite a bit of time with GIGABYTE yesterday on Day 0 of Computex in their VIP meeting rooms on the 36th floor of Taipei 101 where we got a good chance to look at some of their range of new Ultra Durable 5 based motherboards.

During our meeting we were told that GIGABYTE were the only motherboard maker to have a board that supports dual Thunderbolt ports. It turns out this is not true.

As we were walking around on our spy mission early in the Nangang Computex hall, we ran into ASRock who were showing off an upcoming Intel Z77 based motherboard that also supports dual Thunderbolt ports on the I/O panel.

Computex 2012 - Besides Thunderbolt, the other big thing for GIGABYTE at Computex 2012 is Ultra Durable 5. The Ultra Durable name has been going strong for the Taiwanese motherboard maker for many years now. Ultra Durable basically stands for the high quality parts that GIGABYTE decide to place on its motherboard that try to make their boards stand out from the competition in terms of stability, life, cooling and more.

The latest addition to the series Ultra Durable 5 adds single package "power stage". It's different from a regular and traditional MOSFET in that the solution from IR (the PowIRstage IR3550) combines all of the parts into a single package chip. Usually the driver IC, high side and low side MOFSETS are separate individually chips. The IR3550 is able to deliver 60 amps of power were power stage chip and is said to deliver and much cooler, cleaner and efficient power supply.

The results really do speak for themselves as you can see in the video above. GIGABYTE had some competitor boards on display that use a traditional 6 phase and 8 phase power design. All systems on display were configured with the exact same hardware and settings with all except the middle boards running the CPU at 100% load. The middle board had a 90% load. You can see from the results yourself that the new power stage feature on GIGABYTE's Ultra Durable 5 makes a really big difference when it comes to the operating temperature of the power area when under load.

Computex 2012 - Before I head out of the VIP Media Suite here at Taipei 101 for GIGABYTE we had a quick look at some of the upcoming motherboards that we'll see over the coming weeks and months. Three boards managed to really steal our attention with the first being a refresh of the high end X79 chipset. The new GA-X79S-UP5 WIFI comes in as part of the new UP series.

Along with that we've got 8 SAS Ports offering us support for a large amount of storage while 3-Way CrossFire and SLI support means that it's a great option for gamers as well who want some serious horsepower. In typical fashion we can also see that Black / Blue design that we've grown to love from Gigabyte over the years.

Along with this, we also saw the new GA-X79-UP4 which also is part of the new UP series from GIGABYTE. This is the first time we've seen a "4" based motherboard with us normally seeing a UD3 and then UD5. As you would assume it slides in between those two boards and when avaliable we'll organise a closer look at it.

Computex 2012 - Thunderbolt is going to be a big thing this year at Computex with Intel having one of the first press events showing off the technology. Over at the Gigabyte suite in Taipei 101 we got a chance to check out the upcoming GA-Z77X-UP5 TH Thunderbolt motherboard which brings with it two onboard Thunderbolt ports offering 10 Gbps transfer each.

What good is a Thunderbolt board without Thunderbolt devices. Alongside the upcoming motherboard we got a chance to look at a number of Thunderbolt

devices that Gigabyte are testing from Apple, Blackmagicdesign, Lacie and Promise to name just a few of the companies. You can also see that we had a chance to see some Thunderbolt cables from SUMITOMO including an upcoming 10m / 20m cable.

Computex 2012 - Hanging out at the VIP Media Room at Taipei 101 we've had a chance to check out a couple of new motherboards that Gigabyte has launch or are launching over the coming weeks and months. The first motherboard we got a chance to look at is the upcoming GA-F2A85X-UP4 which falls into the new UP series from Gigabyte

Supporting next generation FM2 A Series APUs from Intel the GA-F2A85X-UP4 brings with it support for Dual Channel DDR3 2400MHz DDR+, 8 SATA3 ports, 6 USB 3.0 ports and Lucid Virtu technology.

You can see we've got the same black color scheme we've grown to love from Gigabyte along with our quick access power button in the top right corner and our debug reader on the bottom right.

AMD still has yet to release the desktop version of Trinity, but that hasn't stopped ECS from showing off its latest creation. ECS has released pictures and a bit of information about its upcoming motherboard designed for the AMD desktop Trinity APUs. The full-size ATX board is called the A85F2-A Deluxe and looks pretty good.

About all we know about the chipset is that it is an A85X chipset, which is one that AMD has yet to announce. We have a few more details available about the board such as it features six USB 3.0 ports, four of them near the I/O section. The board sports 7 SATA III 6Gbps ports just in case you have that many SSDs. That number also includes an external eSATA port.

The board also features two PCIe-x16 sots for graphics cards. ECS has also said that there are four more FM2 sockets in the works: the A75F2-A2, A75F2-M2, A55F2-A2, and A55F2-M3. Furthermore, the announcement says nothing about backwards compatibility, so for now, I would assume that it is not. And of course, a release date is missing as AMD has yet to release the Trinity APUs.

I love me some new hardware. I don't read Chinese the best, if at all, but what I gather from these pictures and a bad Google Translate is that ASUS has released two new motherboards that support Intel's super fast Thunderbolt port. The products in question are the P8Z77-V PREMIUM and P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT and ASUS claims they have been Intel certified.

The boards appear to be ATX standard based and the P8Z77-V PREMIUM features 4 PCIe-x16 slots and 2 PCIe-x1 slots. It also comes with dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. Additionally, it features an mSATA SSD for Smart Response and a front USB 3 expansion module. These boards are both, as the name implies, using the Intel Z77 chipset that was released in conjunction with Ivy Bridge.

The second board, the P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT, sports the same 2 PCIe-x1 slots with only 3 PCIe-x16 expansion ports. It features a single Gigabit Ethernet port and DVI, VGA, and HDMI video connectors. It does not come with an mSATA SSD, nor does it feature a DisplayPort output. Prices are unknown at this time. More as it comes.