VR-Zone

It's easy to forget about the smaller players in the motherboard market, but Biostar has reminded us that it's still a player with the unveiling of its first Z77 motherboard, the TZ77XE4. The board itself isn't all that remarkable though, especially not for a high-end model, but it's the first Z77 motherboard to be officially announced.

The TZ77XE4 looks decent enough with no less than three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots which should operate in x8, x4 and x4 when all four slots are in use, although it's not clear if two slots can operate in dual x8 mode. The board also has a single PCI Express x1 slot and two PCI slots. Other features include the standard set of Intel SATA ports – two SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps – as well as an additional pair of SATA 6Gbps ports, a header for two USB 3.0 ports – which now are integrated into the Intel chipset – a few USB 2.0 headers, a POST80 debug LED and power, reset and clear CMOS buttons. The board also has a 12+1 PWM design cooled by a pair of fairly large heatsinks connected to each other via a heatpipe.

Around the back there's a PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, 7.1-channel analogue audio and a D-sub, DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI port. That's a pretty decent set of features from a company like Biostar, although we're expecting to see more impressive boards in the near future. We should be getting a closer look at what else Biostar has to offer at Cebit in March.

Source: TechPowerUp