We're not entirely sure what it is with the sudden propensity towards artillery themed heatsinks with respect to Intel's X79 chipset, only that it seems to be a popular motif. We saw it first with Gigabyte's G1.Assassin 2 X79 motherboard in the form of a pistol-shaped heatsink, and here again as a fake ammo belt on MSI's upcoming Big Bang XPower II X79 motherboard.

Say what you want about Biostar, just don't accuse the company of lacking excitement over Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge-E launch. In fact, we'd wager Biostar's just as excited as we are, hence the giddy tagline pimping its TPower X79 motherboard as "The most powerful motherboard on the planet." Benchmarks will bear out whether or not that's true, but in the meantime, here's what we know about Biostar's newest slice of silicon.

We were beginning to think motherboard makers had grown completely uninterested in showing off anything that's not built around Intel's X79 chipset for LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors, but that isn't the case with ECS. The mobo maker recently announced the H61H2-A2 Black Deluxe, a new slice of silicon built around Intel's H61 Express chipset with additional chips to support USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps.

At least two top-tier motherboard makers are no longer expecting to hit their board shipment targets for 2011. This is to be somewhat expected, given the frequent delays that plagued AMD's Bulldozer launch and with Intel's Sandy Bridge-E platform still sitting around the corner. The DIY crowd appears to be willing to wait for next-generation technology rather than building or upgrading to current gen parts.