VR-Zone

It's tough being at the bottom of the list of motherboard manufacturers, but it doesn't stop Biostar from doing what it's doing and the company is getting ready to launch its slightly higher-end Z68 motherboard, the TZ68K+. It's not the most impressive addition we've ever seen, as Biostar has only tweaked a few minor feature of its TZ68A+, but it's an improvement nonetheless.

As far as we can tell, Biostar has only changed a single thing on the board, namely the VRM design. Biostar has moved from a 4-phase VRM design to what looks like an 8-phase design. Everything else appears to be identical, from the slot layout to the various peripheral chips used. Biostar seems to have listed a little bit too much to “if it ain't broke, why fix it” saying and we really hoped for something a bit more exciting from the company.

Ok, so there's an additional MOSFET heatsink on the board as well thanks to the new VRM design and a few components have been moved around at the top of the board, but most if not all of them appear to be related to the VRM design changes. It's worth noting that Biostar decided not to implement a dual x8 PCI Express slot layout on this board, instead the second x16 slot only offers four lanes of bandwidth. The rear I/O layout is also severely lacking in our opinion and for what's meant to be a high-end board, Biostar couldn't have done much worse.