motherboard

ASRock's Specially Coated 8 Series Motherboards are Waterproof

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:58:07 +0000

Don't try this at home.

Before self-contained liquid cooling solutions (LCS) became mainstream, water cooling enthusiasts would march over to places like Danger Den (R.I.P.) and order custom parts, fit them together, and then pray to Poseidon that he'd have mercy against leaks. Back then, water cooling aficionados sure could have used a board like any of ASRock's new specially coated 8 Series mobos. Using a layer of "Comformal Coating," ASRock says its treated mobos aren't afraid to get wet, a trait the company hopes the professional overclocking crowd will embrace.

"The special layer of Conformal Coating makes ASRock's motherboards invulnerable to conductive liquids, so overclockers won't have to worry about accidentally spilling liquid nitrogen, liquid helium, or even clam chowder over their motherboards while they are overclocking," ASRock explains. "Along with conductive liquids, Conformal Coating also protects the motherboard against dust, corrosion and extreme temperatures. It is the ultimate armor for the upcoming 8 Series motherboards."

ASRock demonstrates the feature in a short YouTube video, which we've embedded below. Bear in mind that the water you see being poured over the motherboard was routed to avoid the pins, which ASRock says still carries the risk of short circuiting. That means you probably can't get away with sticking one of these boards on the bottom of your fish tank, but should an accidental spill occur, there's a good chance your system will survive, or at least the mobo.

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Column: Take the Socket Pledge With Me

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:25:13 +0000

Looking at the future of CPU sockets

The Mainstream tech media declared the PC dead—yet again—and enthusiasts had a full-on freak-out when rumors surfaced that Intel intended to dump socketed processors within two years. You can read the details of the story here, but let it be known far and wide, Intel will support socketed processors for the “foreseeable future.” AMD, likewise, had already taken the pledge, saying it would be offering socketed CPUs, too.

To the casual observer, this may seem like a tempest in a land grid array. It’s not, of course—it’s really about our freedom to build the systems we want with as much price and performance granularity as we can get. Quite simply: We like our ability to choose what we want rather than having it dictated to us. Want to run a $60 motherboard with a $330 CPU? Go ahead. Planning to start your $350 board with a $100 CPU and eventually move up to a $330 part? That’s your decision to make on the PC today.

Intel's NUC features a CPU soldered on to its motherboard

That won’t be the case if the PC transitions to motherboards with fixed processors, as was rumored. Instead, motherboard companies would greatly pare down their inventories and offer just a handful of boards with integrated CPUs rather than dozens of CPU and motherboard choices. Let’s not even mention that if you ever had a problem with the motherboard, you’d have to toss the CPU with it. And who eats that cost? The mobo maker or the CPU maker?

Such a world would indeed signify that PC end times were nigh, so you can see why the nerd rage was flying.

So, what may really be happening? My guess: Intel is signaling an armistice in the performance arms race between the two x86 powers, as both companies concentrate on the real threat right now: tablets and mobile devices.

Rather than the end of interchangeable CPUs, it’s more likely an end to the brutal “tick-tock” strategy for desktops and laptops. Instead, the upgrade cycles could be stretched out from two years to three. Hardly the end of socketed CPUs.

Hell, for all I know, Intel may need to move to a new type of cartridge design à la the Pentium II’s SEC, so it can embed DRAM into the core or use some technique to increase memory bandwidth for the onboard GPU. I’ll also point out that soldered chips have been in use by AMD and Intel on desktops already—in extremely small form factor boxes.

We really don’t know what will happen in three to four years and, frankly, Intel probably doesn’t either. I do know that any path Intel and AMD take for the PC must include end-user upgradability of the CPU or both will suffer the wrath of their strongest supporters.

Asus Shows Off Rampage IV Extreme Black Motherboard

Paul Lilly — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:46:45 +0000

See every shot in our photo gallery below.

What better way is there to head into the weekend than by spying a few shots of a swank blacked out motherboard that's to be used for some secret project? If you feel the same way, then give kudos to Asus for supplying a bunch of pictures of its Rampage IV Extreme - Black motherboard, which we've placed into a photo gallery for your convenience. So, what do we know about this motherboard?

Well, Asus emphatically states that this isn't the official Black Edition, though it is called Rampage IV Extreme - Black, and obviously the PCB (printed circuit board) is black in color. In fact, this is one of three boards that Asus never plans to sell (boo!). Apparently Asus has something else in mind for these slabs of silicon, though it didn't say what or when.

The board is based on Intel's X79 Express chipset for LGA2011 processors. It has eight DDR3 DIMM slots, 4-way SLI/CrossFire support, and all the features you'd expect from a Republic of Gamers (ROG) board.

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Asus Teases Upcoming Haswell Motherboard

Paul Lilly — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:21:16 +0000

Haswell is coming and it appears Asus is prepared.

As summer approaches, so too does the launch of Intel's 22nm Haswell platform, the upcoming successor to Ivy Bridge. Barring any last minute delays, Haswell parts are expected to debut in early June, according to leaked roadmaps that have shown up online. At least one motherboard maker is ready. Asus posted a few teaser shots of its Gryphon Z87 mainboard, a next generation slice of silicon with a new socket.

The board is a Republic of Gamers (ROG) part, which indicates it's an enthusiast-level board aimed at gamers and overclockers alike. Other than a "Windows 8 Ready!" stamp, there aren't any details revealed in the mobo shots.

"It's still too early to reveal all, but we had to let you know a little," Asus stated on its teaser page. "There's more than just a new socket, Intel 4th Generation Core CPUs, and and a new Z87 chipset. It's time for the brand new Gryphon."

The world "Gryphon" links to a Wikipedia entry explaining that it's a variant of "griffin," a legendary creature with the head, talons, and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. Apparently they like M&M candies too.

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Thunderbolt Motherboard Reviews

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 23:38:36 +0000

Getting the new tech requires a new motherboard

With our skepticism of Thunderbolt officially blown away, we’re now ready to embrace the new I/O interface. But unless you’re one of the lucky few to have an older Asus board with support for the company’s Thunderbolt add-in card, you’ll need to buy a new motherboard to enjoy Tbolt goodness. Luckily, Thunderbolt boards have arrived. To gauge the choices, we gathered up both the priciest and cheapest Tbolt boards we could find and set at them.

Asus P8Z77-V Premium

LGA2011 boards have always occupied the luxury side of town, whereas LGA1155 has been pretty blue collar. Not anymore. Asus’s new P8Z77-V Premium pretty much shatters the idea that LGA1155 boards are low rent.

The Asus P8Z77-V Premium comes fully loaded with features, including Wi-Fi antennas.

How swanky is it? This Z77 board is brimming with every bell, whistle, and horn available. Obviously, Thunderbolt is here, in the form of a single Thunderbolt port using Intel’s “Cactus Ridge” DSL3310 second-gen Tbolt controller. Asus also equips the board with a PLX8747 PCIe 3.0 switch chip, so the board is able to run up to four GPUs. Boards without a bridge chip are normally constrained to two GPUs, and some boards switch off components too.

Want more? There’s also the excellent Asus fan controls, a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module, a secondary Marvell SATA 6Gb/s with four ports, and a 32GB Lite-On SSD in the mSATA slot, in addition to the two Gigabit ports running Intel silicon. There’s so much hardware jammed onto this board, it takes an afternoon just to go through the UEFI settings.

Performance of the board is quite good, especially with the “free” mSATA SSD used for caching (which we did for our testing).

So how much does all this hardware cost? A lot. At $450, the P8Z77-V Premium is the most expensive Z77 board we’ve reviewed. And unfortunately, not all the features make sense to us. The mSATA, for example, isn’t useful for anything beyond caching due to its size. But will someone who runs a 4x GPU setup and Thunderbolt really be running a hard disk as his or her primary boot device?

For the most part, you have to have particular needs to want the P8Z77-V Premium. Obviously, just wanting the most tricked-out Z77 board on the market is one need. The other is more practical: You need to run more than three GPUs and you must have Thunderbolt. Frankly, without those specific needs, we think it would be more fiscally prudent to buy a non-Premium version of the P8Z77-V and add the optional Thunderbolt card.

Don’t get us wrong, the P8Z77-V Premium is fully loaded, stable, and the fastest-booting Z77 board we’ve tested yet (it’ll go from cold to OS in 17 seconds in Windows 8) but most folks will likely find it just too much motherboard for too much money.

Asus P8Z77-V Premium

Every feature known to man; incredibly fast boot; very advanced UEFI.

Pricey; mSATA drive doesn’t make sense for a high-end build.

$450, www.asus.com

Gigabyte ZX77X-UP4 TH

It’s commonly understood that if you can run Thunderbolt, you probably also snack on Beluga caviar, wear a Patek Philippe watch, and vacation in a country only rich people know about: Grenyarnia.

Not so, actually. Thunderbolt apparently doesn’t require you to smash the piggy. This is no more apparent than with Gigabyte’s ZX77X-UP4 TH. What the TH stands for we don’t know for sure, but we’re guessing it has some relation to Thunderbolt, which the ZX77X-UP4 TH has in spades.

It’s hard to believe you can get a board with not one, but two Thunderbolt ports for under $200.

The ZX77X-UP4 TH pretty much has all the modern must-have components, including both native Intel and discrete VIA USB 3.0 ports. There’s also SLI/CrossFireX, an mSATA slot, and not one, but two Thunderbolt ports.

The fact that Gigabyte can jam all this into a board that streets for $190 is astounding. Lest you think the board is the equal of the P8Z77-V Premium, it isn’t. The lack of extra SATA controllers, surface-mount power switches, extra SATA ports, and a POST LED affirms this board’s pedestrian pedigree, but for the price difference, you could buy a CPU.

In performance, the board gave us interesting results. It’s the first one we’ve tested that has faster USB 3.0 performance than the Asus boards, but in overall graphics and system performance, the Gibabyte was slightly slower than the Premium board. To be fair, we did enable SSD caching on the Asus P8Z77-V Premium, but that’s because the board comes with it. Like other Gigabyte boards, the ZX77X-UP4 TH turned out slower-than-expected performance in some graphics tests. It’s not a huge disparity, but it shows up in the numbers. Because we’ve seen it in three Gigabyte boards now, it’s likely some driver-related issue.

Another thing we should note is that our review board smelled like an iPhone crawled into the ass of a laptop and died there. The heavy electronic stink was so overwhelming, we were ready to bury our face in a skunk to get rid of the odor. The smell diminished over time, but P.U.!

Despite the smell, it’s hard to argue with the bargain you’re getting here. The board lets you run multicard setups, packs two Thunderbolt ports (which were tested to within a few percentage points of the Asus P8Z77-V Premium), and even seems to have improved the USB 3.0 performance markedly. Yes, it could use a couple more SATA ports and a good airing out, but for the money, we ain’t arguing.

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4TH

Dual Thunderbolt ports for under $200.

Could use more SATA ports; and smells like burnt toast covered with skunk ass.

$190, www.gigabyte.us

Benchmarks

	Asus P8Z77-V Premium	Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH	Asus P8Z77-V
Price	$450	$190	$190
3DMark 11 Overall	P6,253	P5,914	P6,308
PCMark 7 Overall	5,395	3,709	3,739
PCMark 7 Lightweight	5,194	2,665	2,755
PCMark 7 Productivity	5,442	2,506	2,610
Valve Particle (fps)	210	203	208
SiSoft Sandra 2012 (GB/s)	21.2	21	21.3
SATA 6Gb/s read (MB/s)	517.2	494.4	509.9
SATA 6Gb/s write (MB/s)	255.3	225.9	247.1
USB 3.0 Read (MB/s)	429.4	486.8	429.9
USB 3.0 Write (MB/s)	183.9	223.6	181.3
SLI Compliance	Yes (4-way)	Yes	Yes
32GB Compliance	Yes	Yes	Yes
Auto Overclock (GHz)	4.3	4.43	4.2

Best scores are bolded. We used a Core i7-3770K, 8GB of DDR3/1866 set at DDR3/1600, a WD Raptor 150, 64-bit Windows 7 Professional, and a GeForce GTX 580 in all of our motherboards. SATA 6Gb/s speeds were measured with CrystalDiskMark 3.01 and an OWC Mercury Extreme SSD. USB 3.0 speeds were measured with CrystalDiskMark and a Patriot Wildfire SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure using an Asmedia controller. 32GB compliance was measured with four 8GB DDR3 modules. The P8Z77-V Premium board was tested in SSD-caching mode.

Asus P8Z77-V Premium Review

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 23:26:44 +0000

Asus P8Z77-V Premium

LGA2011 boards have always occupied the luxury side of town, whereas LGA1155 has been pretty blue collar. Not anymore. Asus’s new P8Z77-V Premium pretty much shatters the idea that LGA1155 boards are low rent.

The Asus P8Z77-V Premium comes fully loaded with features, including Wi-Fi antennas.

Performance of the board is quite good, especially with the “free” mSATA SSD used for caching (which we did for our testing).

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Review

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 23:15:26 +0000

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH

It’s commonly understood that if you can run Thunderbolt, you probably also snack on Beluga caviar, wear a Patek Philippe watch, and vacation in a country only rich people know about: Grenyarnia.

Not so, actually. Thunderbolt apparently doesn’t require you to smash the piggy. This is no more apparent than with Gigabyte’s Z77X-UP4 TH. What the TH stands for we don’t know for sure, but we’re guessing it has some relation to Thunderbolt, which the Z77X-UP4 TH has in spades.

It’s hard to believe you can get a board with not one, but two Thunderbolt ports for under $200.

The Z77X-UP4 TH pretty much has all the modern must-have components, including both native Intel and discrete VIA USB 3.0 ports. There’s also SLI/CrossFireX, an mSATA slot, and not one, but two Thunderbolt ports.

In performance, the board gave us interesting results. It’s the first one we’ve tested that has faster USB 3.0 performance than the Asus boards, but in overall graphics and system performance, the Gibabyte was slightly slower than the Premium board. To be fair, we did enable SSD caching on the Asus P8Z77-V Premium, but that’s because the board comes with it. Like other Gigabyte boards, the Z77X-UP4 TH turned out slower-than-expected performance in some graphics tests. It’s not a huge disparity, but it shows up in the numbers. Because we’ve seen it in three Gigabyte boards now, it’s likely some driver-related issue.

CES 2013: Look Ma, AMD's 990FX DOES Have PCIe 3.0 Support! [Video]

Paul Lilly — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:41:30 +0000

Surprise, surprise -- PCIe 3.0 was baked into AMD's 990FX chipset all along.

Our CES video coverage continues with a tour of Asus' booth, where Deputy Editor Gordon Mah Ung captured on camera the company's E2KM1-L Deluxe mini-ITX motherboard (shown in thumbnail image). It's a replacement for the old E45 Brazos 2.0 boards, the big difference being a soldered on dual-core Trinity CPU. But the real surprise was still to come.

Sitting over to the side was Asus' new Sabertooth 990FX/Gen3 R2.0 motherboard. It has all the bells and whistles you'd expect from this caliber motherboard, and at a glance, it looks like any other slice of 990X silicon.

Unlike other 990FX boards, however, this latest Sabertooth features PCie 3.0 support. Yep, it looks as though AMD had PCIe 3.0 support in the 990FX chipset all along, though it hasn't been enabled up to now.

Unfortunately, existing 990FX board owners won't be able to enable PCie 3.0 via a BIOS update. Special hardware on the board itself is required.

Have a look:

Moving on from motherboards, Asus brought with it a PCIe-based solid state drive (SSD). Asus is keeping most of the details to itself, refusing to divulge the type of controller it's using, capacity, or price. Heck, Asus didn't even want us to film the back of the card.

We were allowed to film the front, however, spying a glimpse of the neat lookign shield. Asus also demonstrated the SSD running in a system, indicating that this is a real product. The card, which is intended for enthusiasts, is expected to be available in 3-6 months.

Take a look, andbe sure to check back often for more CES coverage and videos. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel at MaximumPCMag.

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CES 2013: Gigabyte Shows Off Thin Micro ATX Motherboards [Video]

Paul Lilly — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:07:38 +0000

Thinner motherboards translate into slimmer all-in-one desktops.

Sultan of Star Trek knowledge and Maximum PC Deputy Editor Gordon Mah Ung had an opportunity to see a pair of thin motherboards at Gigabyte's suite at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Gigabyte's GA-H77TN and GA-B75TN are built around Intel's new thin mini-ITX form factor, and as you'll see in the video, they're much slimmer than standard motherboards.

Why create a thinner form factor? They're intended for increasingly slim all-in-one systems, including whitebox AIOs that allow end-users to roll their own rig.

Both boards are equipped with an LGA1155 socket, four USB 3.0 ports, four SATA ports, a pair of SO-DIMM slots, and a single PCI Express x4 slot flanked by two Mini PCI Express slots. They also feature DisplayPort and HDMI output. In addition to AIO systems, Gigabyte will also market these boards for home theater PCs, data servers, industrial applications (kiosks), and other embedded platforms.

Take a closer look in the video below, and be sure to check back often throughout the week for more CES coverage. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel at MaximumPCMag.

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CES 2013: Gigabyte's Dual Thunderbolt Motherboards Support 4K Resolution

Paul Lilly — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:06:26 +0000

Dual Thunderbolt mainboards from Gigabyte implement Intel Collage display technology.

Gigabyte on Tuesday announced support for 4K display resolutions using multiple standard 1080p displays with intel Collage display technology. The new feature comes courtesy of a Intel driver update that Gigabyte claims needs to be individually implemented by motherboard companies before it's made available to end users. One of the key benefits is that a discrete graphics card isn't required.

All you need is a Intel 3rd Generation Core i3, i5, or i7 processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and a Gigabyte board with dual Thunderbolt ports. With the right setup, the 4K Collage driver can power an Ultra HD 4K video stream across four standard displays.

"Our implementation of Intel’s new Collage display technology means that Gigabyte’s exclusive dual Thunderbolt motherboards are first to power the very latest Ultra HD resolutions across four of today’s standard displays," commented Henry Kao, Vice President of Gigabyte Motherboard Business Unit. "Offering a wealth of possibilities in commercial markets that include digital signage, surveillance, medical and more, we’re also excited to offer PC DIY customers the opportunity to enjoy 4K resolution support with a simple driver update on their existing hardware, and without a VGA card!"

Gigabyte boards that support the feature include the Z77X-UP5 TH, Z77X-UP4 TH, and Z77MX-D3H TH.

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Top Tier Motherboard Vendors Expect Shipments to Slip or be Flat in 2013

Paul Lilly — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 20:13:55 +0000

Asus and Gigabyte lay out expectations for motherboard shipments next year.

The do-it-yourself (DIY) market isn't dying by any means, though there are signs it may be shrinking slightly, whether it's because of the economy or the current fascination with tablets and other mobile form factors. Either way, top tier motherboard vendor Asus says it expects motherboard shipments to dip 2.3 percent to 21.5 million units in 2013, after already dropping 5.2 percent in 2012.

Be careful not to read too much into those figures, however, as they could be indicative of increased competition from rival motherboard vendors. Gigabyte, for example, saw its shipments in 2012 rise 11.8 percent compared to one year prior, and expects to ship the same number (19 million units) of mobos in 2013, DigiTimes reports.

Gigabyte also says it expects to end the year with a 20.7 percent increase in video card shipments with 3.5 million units. It's also worth mentioning that both AMD and Intel recently stated they're committing to supporting socketed CPUs for the foreseeable future.

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Intel Says Company Committed to Sockets

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:50:36 +0000

Intel supporting socketed CPUs for "foreseeable future"

Suck it, Internet rumors; Intel finally broke silence this morning telling Maximum PC that it would be offering socketed CPUs for the “foreseeable future.”

The statement should help calm the nerves of panicky enthusiasts who have been reading weeks of rumor stories saying the desktop PC would die along with interchangeable socketed-CPUs.

“Intel remains committed to the growing desktop enthusiast and channel markets, and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the foreseeable future for our customers and the Enthusiast DIY market,” Intel spokesman Daniel Snyder told Maximum PC. “However, Intel cannot comment on specific long-term product roadmap plans at this time, but will disclose more details later per our normal communication process.”

The statement by Intel is rare considering the company doesn’t like to comment on unreleased product let alone unreleased products three years and three generations away. That shows how the rumors have continued to build in critical mass over the last few weeks.

The rumor first surfaced when Japanese tech site PC Watch reported on a leaked roadmap the site obtained including Intel’s plans for Haswell to be the last processor in an LGA socket. After that, Intel would only offer the 14nm-based replacement, codenamed Broadwell in BGA trim. BGA or Ball Grid Array packages must be soldered to boards before being used. Since it’s nigh impossible for the average person to de-solder a processor from a motherboard it would effectively end the paradigm of making your CPU choice separate from the motherboard.

The PC Watch story spawned additional speculative stories and hundreds of heated discussions on forum boards around the Internet. Even wounded AMD got in on the action this morning when the company decided to take a dig at its competitor by reaffirming AMD’s commitment to sockets.

“AMD has a long history of supporting the DIY and enthusiast desktop market with socketed CPUs and APUs that are compatible with a wide range of motherboard products from our partners,” said AMD spokesman Chris Hook.

“That will continue through 2013 and 2014 with the 'Kaveri' APU and FX CPU lines. We have no plans at this time to move to BGA-only packaging and look forward to continuing to support this critical segment of the market. As the company that introduced new types of BGA packages in ultrathin platforms several years ago, and today offers BGA-packaged processors for everything from ultrathin notebooks to all-in-one desktops, to embedded applications and tablets, we certainly understand Intel's enthusiasm for the approach. But for the desktop market, and the enthusiasts with whom AMD has built its brand, we understand what matters to them and how we can continue to bring better value and a better experience.”

Of course, despite Intel’s statement that it is absolutely still supporting sockets will do little to stop the conspiracy theorists. Many will now want hard details on what “foreseeable future” means—details that Intel is loath to provide.

So is Intel likely to ever dump sockets and offer only BGA chips? Maximum PC’s view is that such a future is unlikely. First, server and workstation customers are unlikely to accept BGA products. And since Intel seems intent on offering a high-end product for enthusiasts such as the LGA2011 platform, enthusiasts would probably always have the big-boy socket to fall back to.

It’s also not clear on why Intel would move to a BGA-only for all desktops. The advantage of BGA chips is mostly done for space restraints in thin notebooks such as Ultrabooks. You could also argue there is a cost advantage since you don’t pay for a socket but a BGA configuration also means you toss the CPU if the motherboard went bad. It’s possible the leaked roadmap refers to the continuing popularity of mini PCs. In fact, Intel is already offering BGA CPUs soldered to motherboards with its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) experiment.

Intel's Next Unit of Computing features a CPU soldered on to the mobo.

However, Intel moving to BGA-only chips within three years would cause a very significant and painful change to the PC ecosystem and how they are built, sold, and marketed. Large OEMs such as Dell and HP, for example, like the flexibility to upsell customers from buying Celeron’s to $350 Core i7 chips. With socketed infrastructures, they can make such a change without rebuilding an entire system on the assembly line. With a BGA solution, the companies would have to start over if the consumer decided he or she wanted a faster CPU.

Kelt Reeves, owner of boutique PC maker Falcon Northwest said the rumors stories he has read are a bit over the top.

“For the past week I’ve seen some press about Broadwell being BGA-only that seems a bit hyperbolic. Everything from ‘this means Intel is destroying the motherboard makers to make everything themselves’ to ‘it will kill the enthusiast market’ to ‘it will force you to by a new $1,500 PC instead of just a new CPU,’” he said.

“I don’t foresee any of that. First, there will be other socketed enthusiast-oriented Intel parts out there, so we’re only talking about some CPUs. Second, if the CPU is soldered down and you want to upgrade, that doesn’t mean you have to buy a new PC, just a new motherboard to support the new CPU you’re upgrading to. If you upgrade your CPU every two years or so, you’re most likely moving to new chipset platforms they require (and thus buying a new motherboard) anyway. So I don’t see it necessarily being a big new expense for end users,”

But then on the other hand, if the rumor were true, it would be leave a lot of unanswered questions.

“Where it does get really questionable for me is in the supply chain,” Reeves said. “If you overclock your soldered-down K-SKU CPU and burn it out, did you kill the CPU or motherboard? And will your motherboard maker have to handle lots of RMA’s from overclockers that aren’t really (the motherboard maker’s) part failing? And the motherboard makers now not only have to stock a $200 motherboard as a piece of inventory, they have to stock a $500 CPU and motherboard combo.”

“That’s an extreme inventory cost hike, and may lead to less motherboard models being made and less stock being kept on hand,” he said. “There’s a lot of ramifications to it that we don’t have enough confirmed info to really evaluate properly yet, but I don’t think a soldered CPU would actually be quite as disruptive to the end user as to the companies in the supply chain.”

Overclockers Vie for World Record with AMD's "Vishera" FX-8350 CPU

Paul Lilly — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:59:16 +0000

The overclocking community is wasting no time putting AMD's new 8-core "Vishera" FX-8350 processor to work chasing world records for CPU frequency. To wit, MSI yesterday sent out a press release bragging that it's 990FXA-GD80 motherboard was used by an overclocker to set a world record of 8.37GHz, and it's already been leapfrogged...twice! The new record, at least for today, stands at 8.67GHz, giving Asus a bit of momentary bragging rights.

Like the two records before his, overclocker AndreYang blew the top off (figuratively) the FX-8350 with just two of the eight cores enabled. He used an Asus Crosshair V Formula Z motherboard, 2GB of G.Skill DDR3 memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, and plenty of Liquid Nitrogen to keep things cool, especially with a dangerously high vCore of 2.064V.

AMD just recently launched its FX-8350 chip, which comes clocked at 4GHz Base and 4.2GHz Turbo. It has 1.2 billion transistors, 1MB of L2 cache (per core, so 8MB total), 8MB of L3 cache, and a rated TDP of 125 watts. Overclocking aside, it's a pretty nice chip for the money (check out our Vishera review, as well as that of our sister site, PC Gamer), just don't expect these kinds of overclocking results without using exotic cooling methods.

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Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 Review

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:40:41 +0000

MicroATX board shoots for your dollar

Gigabyte’s G1.Killer series of motherboards have always been love-it-or-leave-it affairs. While some laud the gun-shaped heatsinks of the series, others think them garish or just plain tacky.

With the G1.Sniper M3, Gigabyte does away with the gun-sinks (though you still get a sheet of stickers riddled with faux bullet holes). More importantly, the board isn’t some budget microATX jobbie designed to get the price under or near $100. It’s based on Intel’s performance Z77 chipset and features Lucid Logix’ Virtu as well as CrossFireX and SLI support out of the box.

The highlight of the board is the Creative Core3D sound chip using a CA0132. That’s the same part used in Creative’s new line of USB and PCIe audio devices. The most notable feature of the Core 3D is probably its “scout mode,” which reduces some sound effects (like explosions) and amplifies footsteps so you can better discern someone approaching you in a game. If you think that’s cheating, then Steve Austin was cheating with his bionic hearing, too. There’s also more to the audio: The audio circuits feature a low-profile metallic RF shield, and an additional pre-amp is integrated to help gamers who run headsets from the front-panel connector. The result is very clean sound and a possible advantage in gaming.

The G1.Sniper M3 gets you SLI and CrossFireX in a compact package

Space is at a premium on microATX boards, so many features are kicked overboard. The most notable is the lack of a Killer NIC controller, a prominent feature of the original Killer motherboards. An Intel network card is included instead. Also gone are surface-mounted power switches, and secondary USB 3.0 and SATA controllers. As we said, SLI and CrossFireX are there, but like all performance microATX boards we’ve tested, the second card sits over the USB, audio, and front-panel connectors. That will make it a very tight squeeze if you run dual cards. Since a multicard config would leave the second card also hanging over the edge of the board, you’ll want a case that’s designed for it.

In performance, the G1.Sniper M3 performs on par with the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H from our Z77 roundup but the Asus P8Z77-V board from that same roundup slightly leads in performance, especially in USB 3.0 mode with Asus’s Turbo Mode activated. The G1.Sniper M3 auto-overclocked the furthest, though. The board’s auto-tune successfully took the CPU to a stable 4.6GHz overclock, which is higher than what we saw from all previous Z77 boards. We did hit a snag trying to get the board back to stock speeds, however—the utility would not revert the speeds to stock no matter what we did. We had to finally load the defaults in the BIOS to get it back to its original state.

Overall, it’s a good board for someone looking to work within the constrained spaces of microATX. Yes, we really wanted more USB and SATA ports, but frankly, when you’ve made the decision to go microATX, you’ve already made a compromise, so just suck it up.

Z77 Motherboard Showdown

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Midrange mobos square off

Not all midrange motherboards are created the same. Sure, these Z77 motherboards all have a black-and-blue color scheme, and they all carry similar street prices, but differences emerge when it comes to features, specs, and performance. Which one should you pair with your new 22nm Ivy Bridge CPU? Glad you asked.

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H

Of all the boards here, we’re most intimately familiar with Gigabyte’s GA-Z77X-UD5H. It’s the board we used for the bulk of our Core i7-3770K testing, and one thing we can say, it’s stable. We’ve literally run more than 50 hours of benchmarks on this board without any issue.

For a sub-$200 board, there are plenty of features, with the most eye-catching being a ton of USB support, including four USB 3.0 ports plus three USB 3.0 headers. This is done using VIA’s USB 3.0 controllers plus the new native support from the Intel Z77 chipset. Unfortunately, features didn’t trump performance. The Gigabyte was smoked by Asus’s super-secret Turbo modes in the benchmarks.

We hit our highest auto-overclock with the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H.

The Gigabyte gets payback by surpassing the two others here in auto-overclocking, hitting 4.5GHz and even offering an unstable 4.68GHz setting. The others topped out on auto at 4.2GHz. The mSATA slot may be the board’s most noticeable feature, though, but we’re not sure it makes sense on a full-size board. Perhaps if it came with the SSD module; but we don’t see any actual advantage to it, particularly since using it disables one SATA port.

Overall, the GA-Z77X-UD5H is a feature-rich mobo for its midrange price. The slot configuration is also a better balance with just one PCI slot instead of two. You get far more I/O and higher auto-overclocks than with the other two boards. Hell, it even comes with probe ports for those of you into the overclocking sports.

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H

Tons o’ USB support, plus FireWire and eSATA.

Empty mSATA makes us sad.

$189, www.gigabyte.us

Asus P8Z77-V

Apparently budget board means legacy support. That’s what we inferred from Asus’s P8Z77-V board, which has a quaint PS/2 port and not one, but two PCI slots. Don’t think that means Asus cheaped out on more modern amenities, though. Although there’s no eSATA or FireWire, Asus includes some truly compelling features such as onboard Wi-Fi, an Intel LAN controller, incredibly fast USB 3.0, and a revamped Fan Xpert 2.

What’s so exciting about Fan Xpert 2? Plug fans of different makes and speeds into any of the four auxillary fan headers and the board will automatically measure the minimum and maximum speed of each fan and tune them for you with the most advanced fan-tuning applet we’ve ever seen from a board maker. If fans don’t get you hot, consider the board’s Turbo mode speeds, which trounce all others by hefty margins.

The Asus P8Z77-V excels with bundled Wi-Fi and impressive USB 3.0 speed.

Like Gigabyte, Asus pushes the Ivy Bridge chip harder than MSI. On Turbo with single- and multi-threaded loads, the Asus hit 3.9GHz. The MSI board was more conservative at 3.7GHz on most workloads.

Overall, we give the nod to the P8Z77-V in this roundup for its performance and useful features, but we can see why someone would go for the Gigabyte for sheer port madness and eSATA and FireWire needs.

Asus P8Z77-V

Fan fans will love Fan Xpert 2; stellar performance.

No eSATA, no FireWire.

$189, www.asus.com

Click on page 2 to read the MSI's Z77A-GD65 review.

MSI Z77A-GD65

Midrange boards typically have to sacrifice features to get under $200 and MSI’s Z77A-GD65 shows evidence of this philosophy. It’s the only board here without a discrete USB 3.0 controller, instead relying on the native Intel chipset for all USB 3.0. It’s also the only board without DisplayPort.

Folks still rolling PCI components will also have to look elsewhere, as MSI ditches the legacy expansion slot for another PCIe slot.

MSI shaved costs by jettisoning extra USB 3.0 ports on the Z77A-GD65.

Don’t take this to mean MSI cut out all the frills. The board has onboard power and reset switches, overclocking voltage contacts, an LED POST readout, and, like the two others here, offers both CrossFireX and SLI as well as LucidLogix Virtu support.

In performance, MSI takes the safe road by keeping the clocks lower than the other two boards. At stock speeds, the board topped out at 3.7GHz on multithreaded loads and generally bounced around 3.8GHz with single-threaded loads. The two others here ran full tilt at 3.9GHz on all workloads. Overall, the performance among the trio is generally close.

Like the Gigabyte, MSI’s board is obviously intended for Ivy Bridge chips. Why? The last x16 PCIe 3.0 slot only works with an Ivy Bridge. If you intend to run an older Sandy Bridge chip, the slot is deactivated, as SNB doesn’t have enough PCIe bandwidth to run it. By sticking with PCIe 2.0 from the peripheral controller hub, the Asus’s third x16 is hot no matter which chip you run.

The Z77A-GD65 is a fine board at its price, but yuan for yuan, the Asus and Gigabyte simply outclass it in extra features and specsmanship.

MSI Z77A-GD65

Intel LAN controller; OC Genie works well.

Not enough USB 3.0 ports; no DisplayPort

$189, www.msi.com

Benchmarks

	Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H	Asus P8Z77-V	MSI Z77A-GD65
3DMark11 Overall	P6,052	P6,308	P6,221
PCMark 7 Overall	3,549	3,739	3,603
PCMark 7 Lightweight	2,526	2,755	2,584
PCMark 7 Productivity	2,387	2,610	2,380
Valve Particle (fps)	203	208	190
SiSoft Sandra 2012 (GB/s)	21	21.3	20.72
SATA 6Gb/s read (MB/s)	497.9	509.9	484.0
SATA 6Gb/s write (MB/s)	230.4	247.1	234.0
Native USB 3.0 read (MB/s)	250.2	429.9	250.9
Native USB 3.0 write (MB/s)	177.5	181.3	177.3
Discrete USB 3.0 read (MB/s)	243.2	324.5	N/A
Discrete USB 3.0 write (MB/s)	178.1	181.8	N/A
SLI Compliance	Yes	Yes	Yes
32GB Compliance	Yes	Yes	Yes
Auto Overclock	4.5GHz	4.2GHz	4.2GHz

Best scores are bolded. We used a Core i7-3770K, 8GB of DDR3/1866 set at DDR3/1600, a WD Raptor 150, a GeForce GTX 580, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional in all of our motherboards. SATA 6Gb/s speeds were measured with CrystalDiskMark 3.01 and an OWC Mercury Extreme SSD. USB 3.0 speeds were measured with CrystalDiskMark and a Patriot Wildfire SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure using an Asmedia controller. 32GB compliance was measured with four 8GB DDR3 modules.

NOTE: This article appeared in the August 2012 issue of the magazine.