Motherboards - Page 29

CES 2012 - As any ASUS user will tell you, on the ROG series there is already a pretty full gamut of offerings for software overclocking and control of various features that come with their motherboards and add-on devices. As seen in this screen shot, there are now seven windows of opportunity. We all know there is a version of CPU-Z and GPU-z, along with the GPU Tweak program, as well as others, but there is a couple of hidden gems in this image.

The first offering I am going to cover is the new ROG Exchange program. What this offers is the ability to go to a database on ASUS' web site and pick from a multitude of pre-clocked configurations saved into a file that users can download. You simple pick through a list of offering with your board and processor and find the file you think fits your needs and let the software load it into the bios for you. Also with this software, you can be in the driver's seat and load bios files that you have found to work well and share it with everyone else. This should make overclocking much easier for those who don't have the time to learn everything in the bios, and let the professionals do all the tedious testing for you.

Anyone remember MEMSet? Well for me personally, it has been broken since the release of the P55 chipset, and has been rendered pretty much useless. Asus picked up that burnt out torch, lit it, and is now running full speed to its users for a functional version of an on the fly Windows environment memory timing adjustment application called Mem TweakIt. Now ASUS users will have the option to do a bit of tinkering with their memory on the screen before you go into bios and apply new stable timings.

Shamino posted a thread on the kingpincooling forum, where the ASUS R&D have figured a way to publish voltage modifications for graphics cards.

These include control of the VGA loadline, switching frequency, OverCurrent Protection and core voltage. The picture above shows what to solder with the Rampage IV Extreme. These headers are then plugged into the video card, in the below shot. There are some steps you should follow:

CES 2011: CES is a time where technology porn is at its highest. ASUS stepped up their game by showing off their ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard which supports the soon-to-be-released Intel Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon E5 platform.

As you can see in the above shot, the board looks insanely hot, sporting no less than seven PCIe slots, and eight DIMM slots. It also has ten SATA ports, and of course, dual Socket LGA 2011 support. The board is powered by a single 24-pin ATX power connector backed up by dual 8-pin connectors.

Considering how feature-packed the board is already, it's surprising that on the rear panel we only see two USB 3.0 connectors. On top of using Intel PHYs and Realtek audio, there's an ASPEED AST2300 2D VGA controller and also provides management over IP. Also spotted on the board is a swappable LOTES 'X-Socket' which is also used on the X79 ROG boards and CHiL PWMs.

CES 2012 - GIGABYTE just got done holding their "Meet the Executives" event at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas and one of the big points for staying ahead of their competition (ASUS) was to be first out with new technology.

One big new piece of technology coming out sometime later this year is Intel's Ivy Bridge platform. We are already bound by an NDA, so there is little we can say. A quick search on Google though shows things like native USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3.0 support. It will be a mid-range platform, you can think of it as an updated Z68 Express for upcoming Intel processors.

After giving attending media a rundown on GIGABYTE's aims for 2012, Colin Brix of GIGABYTE started bashing on the door of a nearby room in the hotel suite and asked if we could interrupt and show off the Taiwanese company's range of upcoming Ivy Bridge boards. We got see the full model range including the G1. Sniper 3, G1 Sniper 3 M3 (Micro-ATX), Z77X-UD5H, Z77X-UD3H and B75M-D3H.

MSI have officially released their flagship motherboard based on the X79 Express chipset, taking the LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E CPUs. MSI have dubbed the board Big Bang-XPower II and boy does it have some great features.

The board sports support for PCI-Express 3.0, 4-way NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire technologies, 8 DIMM slots that can handle an insane 128GB of RAM, 22-phase PWM design with Hybrid Digital Power, dual 8-pin CPU and single 6-pin VGA power connectors to reach Xtreme Power Design as well as the introduction of MIL-STD-810G certified Military Class III components.

This board is aimed squarely at overclockers, super high-end gamers and those who simply want the best in motherboards. The color scheme of the board looks slick too, as well as the magazine-looking heatsink that just looks amazing. Because the Big Bang-XPower II has a 22-phase PWM design with Hybrid Digital Power, it can deliver up to 770W output, 2.4 times the reference 9-phase design.

Biostar have officially launched their first Sandy Bridge-E (LGA2011) motherboard, after the previously-leaked TPower X79 made the rounds a few weeks ago. We posted about it last month and now the board has been made official.

The Biostar TPower X79 has the standard ATX form-factor and features support for Intel's latest LGA 2011 socket Sandy Bridge-E processors, a 9-phase power design, an 8-layer, 2 oz Copper PCB, four DDR3-2400 memory slots, and three PCI-Express x16 3.0 slots which enable Quad CrossFireX and 3-way SLI setups.

The TPower X79 also sports dual 8-pin EPS connectors, one PCI and two PCIe x1 slots, three SATA 3.0 Gbps and four SATA 6Gbps ports, one eSATA connector, Gigabit Ethernet, six USB 3.0 ports on the back plate, 7.1-channel audio, a debug LED, UEFI BIOS, and on-board Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons. The board is aimed at the enthusiast/overclocking market and should be available next month.

Intel's upcoming LGA2011 server board product, S4600LG (codenamed "Lizard Head Pass") which will be capable of handling 1TB of RAM. Yes, that's 1024GB of RAM. The board is designed mainly for high-performance computing and math-intensive server applications, such as video streaming sites using it for transcoding, etc.

The board is capable of achieving such large memory expansion room by providing three DIMM slots per memory channel, with each socket giving four memory channels. The S4600LG supports the 8-core Xeon E5-4600 series Sandy Bridge-EP processors. The S4600LH is driven by an Intel C600 "Patsburg" chipset with up to 8 SCU ports and 2 SATA 6 Gb/s ports. One of the downsides is the board doesn't have any standard expansion slots, with only two PCI-Express 3.0 x48 risers, which daughterboards with three x16 slots each, can be attached (as shown in the picture above).

The board also sports dual Intel LAN with VT support, KVM and BMT logic is in-built and the board should be available in Q2 2012. 1TB of RAM, doesn't that just sound insane to others? I really think we'll see a shrink in personal machines over the future as Windows becomes much better on resources, but for a server build, this thing is a beast and a half.

[update] I've been informed by Gigabyte that it was not an actual build issue, but a BIOS-related problem. Gigabyte recommend that users who own the below boards update their BIOS immediately, or contact Gigabyte directly (details on this link). Gigabyte have stated it was an isolated case and can be fixed with the use of the F7 BIOS.

I do apologise greatly for the mistake, to both our readers and Gigabyte.

Last week, YouTube user "japan0827" uploaded a video of his overclocked testbed releasing a plume of smoke. Of course, being upset, posted on various Asian message boards with detailed pictures of the board that failed: a Gigabyte X79-UD3, and more specifically, a MOSFET in its CPU VRM.

Today is the big day for Intel and its new Sandy Bridge-E processors and X79 Express chipset platform. The NDA just came off moments ago and now we can give you the full run-down on the ASRock X79 Overclock King Series of motherboards based off the new platform.

Last week we met up with Chris Lee, Director of Marketing, at the ASRock HQ here in Taipei where he gave us a full introduction to its first batch of X79 motherboards. ASRock is launching with five X79 boards right now including the Extreme3, Extreme4-M (Micro-ATX), Extreme4, Extreme7 and the Extreme9.

We spent most of our time in the video above focused on the top-dog, the ASRock X79 Extreme9. This board is packed out with loads of good features including eight DDR3 DIMM slots for quad-channel memory support, five PCI-E x16 slots, active fan cooling for the X79 chipset, loads of SATA-III ports and full digital VRM power management with 18 phases of power for RAM (2) and CPU (16).

Now that the Intel NDA is up for the X79 Express chipset, we can finally let fly with all of our content on the subject. Our latest is from the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei where last week we visited them and got a good look at their range of motherboards to support the new Socket 2011 Intel processors.

Since we've already spent a good amount of time previewing some GIGABYTE X79 boards and others, we didn't want to focus too much on the boards themselves, but some of the features included. We will start off with the all new 3D Dual UEFI BIOS. 3D, you say? Yes - well probably not the kind of 3D you are thinking with movies and the need to pull out some fancy active shutter glasses.

This new BIOS from GIGABYTE focuses on an easy to use experience for people who may be venturing into the BIOS for the first time, yet it is still loaded full of advanced settings for advanced users and overclockers who know what they are doing. When first loading the BIOS, you are shown a full size picture of your motherboard, which can be rotated to show different angles of the board. Using your mouse, you move the cursor over different parts of the system and it gives you a description of what type of options and settings you can change for that part of the motherboard.

Earlier today, MSI shot us an e-mail with some teaser shots of their various boards. Instead of an update to that post, this motherboard deserves its own spot on the news page just because it looks like a boss.

Enter, MSI's Big Bang XPower II, which features eight DIMMs, ten SATA ports (!), a slew of PCIe ports enough to plug in eleventy million cards, X-Fi MB2 on-board, and what stands out on its military black theme, is a row of 6 bullets that make up a magazine as a heatsink. We have never seen this before, except for oh wait, Gigabyte's G1 Sniper boards, but hey, two can play at this game, right?

The board itself is so big that MSI have had to change their underwear from ATX to XL-ATX to accomodate the extra girth.

My inbox this morning had some glorious news, a tease of the upcoming Sandy Bridge-E boards from MSI. Included, was the super high-end Big Bang XPower II board, all the way down to the smaller micro-ATX X79MA-GD45. If you like pics, there's a bunch below:

First up is the X79A-GD65 8D, which does look quite pretty. It sports various features such as the usual quad-channel DDR3, but includes THX TruStudio PRO sound, CrossFire X and SLI support. It also includes eight SATA ports and eight DIMMs if you're RAM and Storage crazy like most of us.

Next up is the X79A-GD65, only featuring four DIMMs and six SATA ports. This is obviously just a step down from its stronger, bigger brother.

GIGABYTE wants to have something that is more functional than the competitions' UEFI setup programs, and this is where GIGABYTE 3D BIOS steps up and into the ring to have a swing at things. When you hit DEL at POST to load up the setup program, it starts up the 3D BIOS home screen. On the home screen, you find a 3D rotatable image of your motherboard.

Cool, right? Well, you can use your mouse to spin the board around and check it out - certain parts of that motherboard image can be clicked to open up settings related to it. Let's say you want to click on the SATA ports on that image, click it and the program will open up SATA controller settings. Clicking on the memory slots brings up the memory tuning settings window. Very, very cool.

The visual elements all look spiffy, including smooth fonts, curves and lavish use of alpha. The fine tuning pages don't look like a re-skinned, mouse-enabled version of the old interface, but now include genuine GUI elements like sliders, tickboxes, radio buttons and tabs. A video demo of this is available below:

We've seen quite the frey of final revision X79 motherboards being readied up to coincide with the big Sandy Bridge-E launch in just a little over a week from now, but MSI's X79MA-GD45 has just been exposed and should peak interest for many particularly due to one bold attribute - it is built around the Micro ATX form factor.

I bet you're already thinking of how cool it would be to have so much power hiding inside a nice compact mATX chassis for your gaming pleasure. The board doesn't disappoint in the features dept. either and should be quite the solid board with the use of MSI's Military Class III components all round.

Taking a good look at the pictures, we can see there are four DDR3 slots and a couple PCI-E x16 slots for SLI or CrossfireX goodness. The board has two SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and four more SATA 3.0 Gbps ports along with a couple USB 3.0 ports on the rear I/O and two more via headers. A Clear CMOS button is conveniently provided on the rear I/O along with 7.1 channel audio (including both S/PDIF coaxial and optical outputs) and Gigabit ethernet.

Any reason to show off some more Sandy Bridge-E / X79 related goodness is a good one, especially now with it being one of the hottest topics thanks to the launch right around the corner. And thanks to Biostar we can give you some more of it with pics and details on their upcoming TPower X79 motherboard for the next-gen LGA-2011 platform from Intel.

The board, while being by Biostar who tend to be renowned for delivering a more no frills, lower priced piece of hardware, looks to be quite strong by design overall, with no real shortcomings over the many other X79 motherboards we've been lucky enough to see pre-launch; unless of course you compare it directly to something like ASUS' Rampage IV Extreme.

The TPower X79 uses an impressive looking 8-phase DuraMax VRM power setup with active phase control and direct FETs. There are two 8-pin EPS connector points on the board along with the 24-pin ATX as well as an optional 4-pin Molex used for added PCIe slot stability. The board also sports POSCAP capacitors in the CPU area along with a high quality clock generator. This together with Biostar's history of producing more simplified OC'ing motherboards that gave some record-setting results gives reason to believe the TPower X79 could be a real force to be reckoned with in the overclocking stakes for Sandy Bridge-E.

ASRock have come out swinging today with some Sandy Bridge-E flavored teasing. ASRock shot off e-mails all across the world announcing they were showing off some X79-based motherboards. No list of specifications or features were included, but we do have some delicious photos to show you.

First up, we have the X79 Extreme9 which sports eight DIMM slots, five PCI Express x16 slots, dual auxiliary 12V power connectors, 12 SATA ports and network connectivity/audio are powered by what looks to be Creative's new Core3D audio chip. The Extreme 9 features a hot-as-hell color scheme and fills out along the rest of ASRock's X79 line.

Next up we have the Extreme7 which throws out the add-on card and two DIMM slots, but adds a PCI slot into the mix. Because two of the DIMM slots were thrown overboard, the Extreme7 features more extreme VRM cooling. As you can see, it sports a tiny little fan just like the Extreme9 - one of the biggest downfalls of these boards.

While most attention is now on Sandy Bridge-E with the mid November launch date closing in fast and Bulldozer having left a trail of despair, that doesn't stop Z68/LGA1155 remaining with a super firm hold of the market thanks to its characteristics in providing a brilliantly balanced, high performance platform for all types of users.

That said, it's worth mentioning that MSI has just outed another Z68 offering in m(icro)ATX form - the Z68MA-G43 (G3). The highlight of this particular offering is, as its model name denotes, the inclusion of PCI-Express Gen 3 via a couple PCI-E (3.0) x16 slots.

Apart from that, it gives much of what you'd expect from such a board - four DDR3 DIMM slots, a couple SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, a couple USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit ethernet, 7.1 channel audio and for video output there's D-Sub, DVI and HDMI on tap. MSI rounds the feature set out with its OC Genie II overclocking facility and of course, that lovely UEFI BIOS we've all quickly grown to love.

Yesterday we attended an ASUS motherboard technology seminar in Taipei where we were introduced to its range of upcoming Intel X79 Express chipset based motherboards. These motherboards will support second generation Intel Core i7 processors for high-end desktop systems using the new and larger LGA 2011 socket.

Intel has super tight restrictions on what can be said about these new products and as we are bound by an Intel NDA, we need to stick to the rules. That is one of the reasons why the video below might seem a little cryptic at times - we both had to be very careful what we said. The man in the video below is Jack Cheng who is with the ASUS motherboard R&D team and was kind enough to tell us some ASUS ROG driven features of the Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard.

Some of the big ASUS features with this board include the OC Key for simple on-screen and very much on-the-fly overclocking, subzero sense for finding out temperatures under extreme cooling conditions and VGA hotwire for putting your video card through hell and back. There is also the X-Socket which allows you to bring along your old coolers and they'll work on the new 2011 socket - it will also be good for extreme LN2 overclockers and their pots. Besides just the video above, there is a selection of pictures below in the gallery which we took.

Yesterday we attended an ASUS motherboard technology seminar in Taipei where we were introduced to its range of upcoming Intel X79 Express chipset based motherboards. These motherboards will support second generation Intel Core i7 processors for high-end desktop systems using the new and larger LGA 2011 socket.

Followers of ASUS will know the Sabertooth motherboard from previous generations and some will also be happy to know that it is back again with the X79 Express chipset. Impressive cooling is a big part of the Sabertooth and Jack Cheng who is with the ASUS motherboard R&D team and was kind enough to go on video and tell us about some of the ASUS driven features of this motherboard.

It's not just cooling though, with the included software powered by the impressive Digi+ VRM power control design you get really good monitoring (12 different parts of the board are digitally thermally monitored) and control over the board and all the different aspects of it using the included Thermal Radar software. There are no real big single handed massive features that will take the crown for the Sabertooth, but the message being sent is that it's "tough".

We just got back from an ASUS motherboard technology seminar in Taipei today where we were introduced to its upcoming range of next-gen Intel motherboards.

Right at the end of the presentation, ASUS announced that it will be offering a full game bundle of Battlefield 3 with its upcoming next-gen Rampage IV Extreme ROG motherboard.

ASUS were not prepared to release any details on pricing at this stage, but they did mention that you would save a lot of money by selecting the bundle version. ASUS will also offer normal versions of the motherboard without BF3 bundled.