On Wednesday, Taiwanese tech community site XFastest ran a public event where it tested five similarly-priced mid-range socket LGA2011 motherboards for CPU VRM performance and stability. This comes at a particularly-important time for Gigabyte, when it's faced with CPU VRM problems that it's dealing with. The results are in.
The ASRock related news aren't over quite yet, as alongside its high-end boards, the company has also unveiled three new entry level Atom mini-ITX motherboards, all with Intel's new D2x00-series of Atom processors. One of the new models sports the 1.86GHz Atom D2500, while the other two comes with the 2.13GHz Atom D2700.
We're not quite sure we're following ASRock's X79 motherboard line-up as the company has introduced the X79 Extreme6/GB, a model inferior to the X79 Extreme7, yet somehow packing more features and a bundle. The bundle is ASRock Game Blaster, the same card that comes with the X79 Extreme9.
We're still not sold on the whole Fatal1ty branding from ASRock, but the upcoming Fatal1ty X79 Professional motherboard from the company is definitely a competitor when it comes to high-end X79 motherboards. It's by far not the most feature rich X79 motherboard out there, but it still has enough features to make it an attractive choice for those that are digging the colour scheme and branding.
As the dust settles from the slightly underwhelming Sandy Bridge-E launch earlier this week, we take a look at another X79 motherboard - ASRock's X79 Extreme4. With 3-way SLi/Crossfire support, 9 onboard SATA ports and a Broadcom Gigabit NIC, this black and gold themed board has more high end features at its entry level price point than most of the competition.
Thought you've seen it all about ASRock's X79 lineup with the X79 Extreme7? Think again, it seems ASRock has another, more feature-rich socket LGA2011 motherboard in the works, which will top off the first wave of ASRock's motherboards compatible with Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" LGA2011 processors, the ASrock X79 Extreme9. This board is packed to the brim with connectivity options, a meatier VRM, and better memory expansion compared to the Extreme7.
Here are some of the first press shots of ASRock's elusive X79 Extreme7, which we broke to the world last month with a teaser picture. The pictures reveal a beast that more or less meets our expectations from a high-end socket LGA2011 motherboard, and confirms much of the feature-set we guesstimated with the help of that teaser pic.
Today we venture into ASRock's lastest top-of-the-line Z68 board which is in a class of its own; a feature packed beauty with an affordable price tag. Follow us as we take a good deep look at what makes the board what it is, from its unique technologies to what makes it roar. Follow us to answer questions like, how do you get PCI-E 3.0 with an NF200? How is the VRM on the Extreme7 Gen3 comparable to other boards? How is this board priced lower than other NF200 bearing boards?
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ASRock is now a full-fledged motherboard manufacturer with boards targeting every market segment, from $50 office PC boards, to all-out enthusiast boards. Its upcoming socket LGA2011 lineup has one such board, one that woos budget-unconcious buyers, the X79 Extreme7.
Believe us when we say that this is one of the most epic reviews we've ever put together. Not because it was the hardest roundup we've ever done, but it's by far the most time consuming one and it doesn't even have anything to do with the benchmarks we ran. We thought it'd be a good idea to do a comparative review of the various USB 3.0 host controllers out there, as by now we've finally reached a stage where there's some competition in the market with at least three major players and a couple of smaller ones. VR-Zone is also proud to have a world exclusive first review of the upcoming Renesas D720201 host controller which is launching later this year as part of this roundup.
If you've been waiting for an affordable Z68 mini-ITX motherboard, then your wait should be over, as ASRock has launched its Z68M-ITX/HT motherboard which should prove to be one of the more wallet friendly mini-ITX Z68 boards out there. That said, it's hardly a crowded market space at the moment with Zotac having the only other two models currently available.
Last week details of ASRock's new PCI Express 3.0 motherboards appeared on the web and today we bring you exclusive hands on pictures of the Z68 Extreme3 and Z68 Extreme7. ASRock will be using the new styling for all of its upcoming motherboards, so expect a lot more black and gold in the future, the only exception being the Fatal1ty boards of course.
We're not sure how much the Fatal1ty branding is really adding to ASRock's brand image, but at least the Fatal1ty series of motherboards stand out from the company's other products. The latest addition is the Fatal1ty 990FX Professional and as the name gives away, this board is based on the AMD 990FX chipset for AMD's FX-series of, ah yes, that's right, the new CPUs haven't launched yet, but anyhow, onwards to the motherboard.
Details of several new motherboards with support for PCI Express 3.0 from ASRock have turned up, including specs of a couple of upcoming models. The most exciting model is the feature packed Z68 Extreme7 which has been given quite a makeover since Computex, not in terms of features, but in terms of looks.
ASRock will be the first to push out motherboards with PCIe 3.0 standard. The ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 is equipped with two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots allowing NVIDIA Quad SLI and AMD CrossFireX. More details inside.
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