Motherboards - Page 28

ASRock has unveiled a high-end Z77 motherboard, the ASRock Z77 Extreme9, and when I say high-end, it's filled to the brim with features. First up, it sports the Z77 chipset which will give us compatibility for Intel's latest 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs. The Z77 Extreme9 sports 4-way NVIDIA SLI support as well as 4-way AMD CrossFireX support.

As for the SLI and CrossFireX support, if all four PCI-Express 3.0 ports are filled, we're looking at x8 for all four slots, or if a 2-way setup is used, it will sport x16 speeds. With graphics out of the way, the board includes no less than twelve (12!) SUB 3.0 ports, with four on the front, and eight on the rear, as well as six SATA 6Gbps ports.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme9 comes with a single x1 PCI Express 2.0 slot, backed up by a mini PCI Express slot that takes a dual-band combo 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 card. On the back of the board along with the eight USB 3.0 ports, you'll find two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA port, a FireWire port, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out, an HDMI-out port, and a clear CMOS button.

Ultra-small-form-factor PCs are all the rage right now. Look around and you'll see Ultrabooks, Zotac Zboxes, and all kinds of other small-form-factor systems. Intel, apparently, was unhappy with the size of the systems and wants to push the envelope just a wee bit further with its new form-factor dubbed the Next Unit of Computing (NUC).

The new 4"x4" (100mm x 100mm) board was shown off by Intel at an event in London last week. It has quite a bit more power than one would think a board of that size would contain. The board currently features Sandy Bridge-based mobile Core i3 and i5 processors. Along with the mobile theme, the board sports a pair of SO-DIMM memory slots.

A pair of Mini PCI Express slots, HDMI, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt ports are also included. Intel expects these NUC PCs to be available in the second half of the year. Most likely they will be sporting Ivy Bridge CPUs by that time. The more capable GPU will be a nice addition as it appears that there is no room for a discrete GPU.

ASUS and Pegatron enjoy quite the relationship, but 2012 is the year of the end of everything, and ASUS now have plans to end their ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) partnership with Pegatron. ASUS first have plans to decrease ODM production of motherboards from Pegatron which will start mid way through the year, after which they'll completely end their ODM relationship by Q3 2012, according to component manufacturers.

After ending their ODM partnership with Pegatron, ASUS will have other companies stand up and take ODM motherboard production, these companies are: Thailand-based Cal-Comp Electronics, Taiwan-based Global Brands Manufacture, Info-Tek and Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS). ECS and ASUS aren't strangers to each other, either, as ECS has been an ODM of graphics cards for ASUS.

Notebook-wise, ASUS have set up ODM cooperation with Foxconn Electronics, Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics, and will reduce production by Pegatron too, the sources added. Considering Pegatron was a spun off from ASUS, it's clear that ASUS want to cut relations between the companies.

It's been a fairly busy day for the TweakTown Taipei team with a visit to GEIL and then we headed on over to MSI who were nearby.

We were shown a few products during our meeting, but the one that stood out to us the most was their upcoming Z77A-GD80 motherboard, which you can get up close and personal with in the video we embedded above. This board supports the upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge processors which if you have been reading TweakTown this past week, you know quite a bit about now.

What's probably the most interesting feature of this motherboard is that it comes with a Thunderbolt connector. It's the first time we've seen a Z77 board with Thunderbolt onboard and that's pretty impressive. We have heard rumours around Taipei of more boards including Thunderbolt, but at this stage of the game, MSI is out in front in this department.

A little birdy sent me an e-mail late last night with some pretty amazing contents: 3GHz memory barrier, smashed. The following goodies were used: Intel Core i7 3770K processor, GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H and some G.Skill memory, in particular, the F3-2666CL10-4GBZHD kit.

The achievement is quite amazing, and there should be some proud people here. First up, the person behind the overclock: sin0822. Secondly, GIGABYTE for their motherboard allowing this, and thirdly, G.Skill for some insanely overclockable memory. The exact speed hit on the memory was 1501.5MHz, just over the 3GHz barrier.

Insane results! sin0822 - you should be very happy with yourself right now. I dub thee with the TT Hero of the Day award. If I had awards, I'd send you one. 3GHz on RAM! WOW!

You may have already seen the first video from our ASRock HQ visit today that checked out their full range of Intel Z77 Express Ivy Bridge boards and now we have two boards based around the Socket 2011 X79 chipset which deserve your attention, and here's why.

Let's start off with the Fatal1ty X79 Champion which as you may have guessed is a high-end gaming motherboard. You could probably consider this an X79 motherboard refresh from ASRock as it gets some nifty features such as the inclusion of the Creative Sound Core3D audio processor which includes "Scout Mode" that allows you to get a better idea of where your enemy is, probably with better audio positioning support compared to other cheaper audio codecs. it also comes with other high-end gaming features such as quad-SLI support.

And next up we have the ASRock X79 Extreme11 which really got out attention, nothing against the Fatal1ty board, but this one is really one to pay attention to for the following reasons. This is one of the biggest motherboards ASRock has produced and it comes totally packed with features. Let's start off with storage - it comes with no less than 14 onboard SATA 3.0 ports and eight of those SATA 3.0 ports are actually SAS 3.0 ports for more critical storage requirements. SAS is powered by the LSI SAS2308 controller and while SAS on server-grade motherboards may not be a new thing, on a desktop motherboard is totally a new thing and really cool.

Earlier on today we visited the ASRock headquarters here in Taipei where we were introduced to their range of Intel Z77 Express Ivy Bridge based motherboards. You know, the ones we have been covering lately over the past couple of days - with more coming!

ASRock literally had a large room filled with Ivy Bridge based motherboards with not just Z77 based products, but also H77, Q77, B75 and so on - the whole shebang. In our video above we have focused just on the boards our audience will be most interested in and knowing you guys, that is the more high-end boards in the new line-up from ASRock.

We are going to let the video above do the talking, but as an introduction to it we got a look at ASRock's gaming boards including the Fatal1ty Z77 Performance, Professional and Professional-M. What's probably most interesting for us is that the Professional-M is the first Micro-ATX based board from ASRock to get the Fatal1ty treatment. We can't wait to test it.

We just posted about our video hands-on coverage of three upcoming ASUS Z77 boards including the P8Z77-V Deluxe, Maximus V Gene ROG and Sabertooth right here and now we have yet another ASUS Ivy Bridge motherboard to tell you about it. It's tiny, but definitely not a small deal.

The tiny item we are talking about is the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe which is a Mini-ITX based motherboard based on the upcoming Intel Z77 Express Ivy Bridge platform. It's small in size, but not in features - that's for sure. Starting off ASUS has created what we think is a super intelligent design by creating a separate daughter board which houses the Digi+ VRM (the power stuff) for this ITX platform instead of squeezing it onto the motherboard and sacrificing the inclusion of other features on the board. Actually, they probably wouldn't have been able to fit the digital VRM stuff on the board itself as it features a 10 phase CPU power setup, which is simply amazing amount of power to be given to a motherboard of this miniature size.

What this all means is that instead of expecting mediocre performance as with most Mini-ITX based motherboards, you get a similar type of experience as you would on even a full sized ATX motherboard in terms of overclocking and gaming performance. We are really looking forward to putting this motherboard into a new SilverStone case and building a small gaming system around it, it should be a lot of fun.

Intel Z77 coverage keeps on rolling in and this time we give you a look at three upcoming ASUS boards based on the upcoming Ivy Bridge chipset. Once again we were told not to say "Ivy Bridge" by ASUS, but surely by now you all know exactly what we are working with here, so we just decided to say it.

As you can see in the video above, ASUS has many bases covered with a full line-up of Z77 boards that support the third generation Core processors based on a 28nm architecture including ones for those who want it all, those who are into gaming (for small systems) and those who are interesting in impressive cooling performance.

We'll start off with the Sabertooth Z77 which is built for consumer workstation level performance. The big thing with this board is that it includes Thermal Armor which is an original ASUS invention to bring a new way to cool your motherboard. The cooling assembly is split into two cooling zones with one covering the northern part of the board and the other the southern part of the board. Two fans are included in the package with are optional to be installed - meaning, the board doesn't really active fan cooling, but if you add the fans in, ASUS measured up to a 10 degree Celsius drop in temperature on some areas of the board.

Earlier on today I did an unboxing video of the brand new and upcoming ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard. This new board based on Intel's Z77 Express Ivy Bridge chipset is due out soon and comes with plenty of features packed in such as ASRock XFast 555 technology (XFast LAN, XFast USB, XFast RAM), Lucid VirtuMVP, Intel Smart Response, Intel Smart Connect and much more.

ASRock told us to say that this board supports 2nd and 3rd generation Intel Core processors and not "Ivy Bridge" processors, but at this stage of the game we're going to say Ivy Bridge, because we all know what we are talking about here.

ASRock's Z77 Extreme6 motherboard features a stylish and attractive gold and black color scheme which looks really great. The PCB is black and gold comes into the theme by way of the gold touches on the coolers as well as the Japanese golden caps. The board includes three PCI Express x16 slots for up to three-way SLI and CrossFireX support. ASRock does claim that the board can support Quad SLI, which it can, but only by way of using two dual-GPU video cards such as the GeForce GTX 590.

Intel's third-generation Core processor platform is almost ready to begin selling and that of course means we are starting to get new Intel ZZ Express based motherboards in for testing. MSI told us to say third-generation Core, but we all know that of course means Ivy Bridge and we know many of you are really excited about this platform.

MSI were one of the first to ship us a Z77 board to our Taipei Test Lab and in something new here at TweakTown which we are starting today, we are giving you an unboxing of it as an early preview before our full review gets posted later on. We hope to do several of these unboxing each week as long as everything goes to plan.

MSI sent us its Z77A-GD65 which is their mid-range Z77 board, but still comes packed with plenty of great features including PCI-Express gen 3 support, Military Class II, OC Genie II, Click BIOS II and much more. The motherboard itself looks brilliant with its stylish black and blue theme. It features passive cooling, but looks to be a rather solid cooling setup with impressive heatsinks, that also looks just great.

GIGABYTE motherboards kick ass, we all know this, but just how much? Well, enough for them to claim the No. 1 spot in the world for motherboard durability. A lot of this comes from GIGABYTE's Ultra Durable technology, which has now spread its tentacles into Ultra Durable 4 on their upcoming 7-series motherboards.

GIGABYTE's industry-leading Ultra Durable 4 technology, is coming on their 7-series motherboards, and helps safe-guard GIGABYTE motherboards from common everyday threats such as humidity and moisture, electro-static discharge, sudden power loss and high operating temperatures.

Henry Kao, Vice President of GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit says:

Intel's 7-series chipset is only a month away, but the PC motherboard industry is seeing some huge movement, with ASRock and GIGABYTE both teasing us with some new boards, and now we have ASUS joining the ranks.

ASUS are teasing with their Republic of Gamers-based board, the next-gen Maximus V board. It seems as though ASUS have the ROG Maximus V ready, and should sport the latest Intel Z77 chipset. The board will most likely come in three flavors: Extreme, Formula and the micro-ATX-based Gene.

Full pictures, and more details should be made available this week, so a little patience is needed. Personally I run a ROG-based board and love it. Never had a single hiccup on it, whatsoever. The new Maximus V board should be a delight to see, and I'm excited to see where ASUS can take their new ROG board.

ASRock have literally just started to show off the upcoming X79 Extreme11 motherboard that hopefully isn't too far away and will get a showing at CeBIT this week. If the previous X79 Extreme9 is anything to go by we should be excited as we found ourselves impressed with what ASRock was doing with the board when we looked at it earlier in the year.

We don't have heaps of information on the board at the moment as the covers have literally just come off it, but you can see, we're dealing with a total of five PCIe x16 slots which offer support for 4-way video card setups (SLI and CrossFireX) along with two legacy PCI slots.

The board comes with two GEN3 PLX 8747 chips allowing for four way setups to run at x16 / x16 / x16 / x16 along with an LSI SAS2308 chip offering us eight SAS ports or eight SATA3 ports which are only part of the 14 total SATA ports on offer with 10 of them being SATA3.

Gigabyte's G1 series of gaming motherboards have shared their fair share of success in the ATX or XL-ATX form factor, but it seems Gigabyte want to continue this success and launched a much-requested mATX model with the G1.Sniper M3.

The Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 shares some of its features with the G1.Sniper 3, but is found in an mATX form factor, where some compromises had to be made. The G1.Sniper M3 sports two PCI-Express 3.0 slots, but both slots would run in x8 mode when populated. It also sports one x16 PCI-Express 2.0 slot, but only has four lanes connected via the chipset, on top of this, we also have a single x1 PCI-Express 2.0 slot.

The G1.Sniper M3 only includes two SATA 6Gbps ports, with three SATA 3Gbps ports to back it up. Considering this is an mATX board, one would only be using a small form factor-based case, which would have limited HDD capacity anyway. It does sport the G1. Sniper 3's same Creative Sound Core3D, too, but with a changed design. VR-Zone have spotted that there are empty spaces where the additional audio-grade capacitors seem to be missing. What will go there, or not go there, is not currently known.

As you might have seen, we just got done covering four of GIGABYTE's upcoming Intel Z77 "Ivy Bridge" motherboards in an earlier story we posted today.

What we also saw today during our meeting at the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei was a revised version of its 3D BIOS. If your memory fails you a bit, that is GIGABYTE's name for its fancy UEFI graphical BIOS for its current motherboards. 3D BIOS adds a layer of interactivity over the "Advanced Mode" BIOS (more like an old style BIOS setup) which shows a picture of your motherboard and options to quickly adjust settings for various areas of the motherboard by simply clicking on that part that you want to change.

The new version of 3D BIOS is refined just in time for the launch of the upcoming Intel Z77 "Ivy Bridge" platform. At this stage only these new Z77 boards we'll get the new and improved 3D BIOS, but at a later stage, older boards may also get upgraded, but that hasn't been decided on yet.

Earlier on today we visited the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei where we got some exclusive hands-on time with its range of upcoming Intel Z77 "Ivy Bridge" Socket 1155 motherboards. GIGABYTE told us to say "3rd generation" processors, but to be more clear, we're telling you they are indeed "Ivy Bridge" processors. These are the boards that will support the upcoming third generation Intel Core processors that are due to come onto the market sometime in April as far as we know at this stage of the game. These boards will also support current Sandy Bridge based processors such as the 2500k, 2600k and 2700k.

We also know that the performance of these said processors is really impressive and the power consumption numbers are great, too. We cannot go into too many details about this platform at this stage, but what we can do is give you a look at what GIGABYTE has planned for the platform with a look at four of its upcoming Z77 boards which we went hands-on with today.

We'll start off with the big daddy which is the G1.Sniper 3, this is a board designer for gamers as well as overclockers and represents as the highest end Z77 board from GIGABYTE at this stage. It comes with an improved cooling setup with oversized heatsinks and a more minimalistic cooler design - rather than a big gun shaped heatsink at the south end of the board, there is just a small golden skull with a knife held in its mouth.

ASRock have just unveiled a new X79-based motherboard, where they've partnered up with pro-gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, who worked closely with ASRock engineers to develop a well-featured motherboard based on Intel's X79 chipset. Enter, ASRock/Fatal1ty X79 Professional. Fatal1ty is quoted:

James Lee, Vice President of ASRock Sales and Marketing chimes in with:

Earlier this week we took a trip to the VIA Technologies office not far from our very own actually here in Taipei and got an introduction to a few new products including the brand new VIA EPIA-M900.

The EPIA-M900 is a Mini-ITX motherboard designed for the embedded market and what's special about this board is that it is the world's first to offer a quad-core processor on a Mini-ITX platform. This processor we speak about is the new VIA QuadCore E-Series at 1.2GHz and it also includes Adaptive Overclocking to increase the processor clock speed a little when under heavy load. What's great about this platform besides its small size and fit me anywhere type design, is that it has a TDP (thermal design power) rating of just 27.5 watts.

The processor is teamed up with the VIA VX900H Media System Processor (chipset) and when combined is able to playback 720p and 1080p video as well as offer up to 8GB of DDR3 memory support along with some other goodies you'd expect such as gigabit LAN, HDMI, VGA, four USB 2.0 ports and audio output. The board also includes a single PCIe x16 slot (with effective speed up to PCIe x8) which would allow you to add in a video card if you require additional video outputs for your digital signage needs or whatever else it may be.

Earlier today Shane Baxtor and I ventured out to the ECS headquarters here in Taipei where we were given exclusive access to look at the Taiwanese motherboard company's range of upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge motherboards that are due to come out onto the market sometime in late March or April as far as we can tell.

In the video above we spent most of our time focusing on ECS' most high-end Ivy Bridge motherboard, the Z77HS-AX Black Extreme. This is a full size ATX motherboard with plenty of the bells and whistles ticked including onboard Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi as well as native USB 3.0 provided by the Intel Ivy Bridge chipset. It also gets some other nice goodies such as onboard power and reset buttons as well as a heatpipe cooling design which looks like it should do an adequate job of keeping things under control in the temperature department.

Some of the big features of this board is the inclusion of not two, but three PCI-E x16 3.0 slots which allows for SLI and CrossFireX support. The first slot is 16 lanes while the other two other eight lanes - ECS was able to achieve the extra lanes by adding in an additional chip which is said to cost $30 alone. As far as memory goes, you get support for DDR3 dual channel and in early testing so far, ECS engineers told us that they have been able to reach over 2600MHz DDR so far.