With Intel’s new range of processor releasing in the coming months, manufacturers are bringing up their new lineup to the public while trying support Intel’s NDA as far as possible.
Here’s what is known about the upcoming motherboards from Asrock,EVGA,Gigabyte,Biostar and MSI along with our analysis on it.
Asrock
We start with Asrock and their crop of colorful boards starting from the mainstream Extreme Lineup to the gaming range Fatal1ty and to the OC Formula
First up, Extreme 4
The Extreme 4 comes loaded with about 9 sata port,One M.2 Socket,one USB 3.0 header and two bios chip onboard.
Apart from that we see a “purity sound” solution, onboard TPM header and Intel Lan. Although the 4 pin molex on middle of the board kinda sticks out.
Then the Extreme6,
This board has a bit better positioning for the 4 pin power,but I would like it to be changed to sata power.
Moving on to the Mini ITX, we have ITX/ac
However we see four Sata ports,one sata express ports and mini PCI-e. Reloaction of the 8 Pin power to middle will cause problems in cable management.
Coming to the gaming range,we have the Fatal1ty Killer
Networking is handled by a Killer E2200 LAN.
And last is the high-end offering : OC Formula
We see a bit more yellow than the previous Z87 OC Formula.
Asrock ahs equipped the abord with on the fly adjustments switches,dip switches for PCI lanes,voltage check points along with better power phases than the other boards in the lineup.
Even though we see quad pci slots there seems to be no PLX chip pointing towards a x8/x4/x4 + x4 like its Z87 cousin.
Additionally the board comes with E2200 lan,M.2 slot,9 sata ports and ace overclocker Nick shih’s autograph on the board itself.
Gigabyte
Gigabyte has added a new “BLACK Edition” to its lineup, although its still unclear what all is going to be added to it.
First glance at the board tells us we will have an integrated VRM heatsink with options for water and air cooling.
The board also have Voltage check points along with SATA power connector for PCIe power.Coming to the storage side we see SATA ports with SATA Express ports, and the audio subsytem uses GIGABYTE’s OP-AMP, AMP-UP and gain switches along with a creative codec.
For overclocking Gigabyte has the SOC Force:
The overclocking button and switces are at top, along with the sata ports and USB ports.There is a distinct lack of PLX chip this time, giving the four PCIe layout a x8/x4/x4 + x4 specs like its predecessor.
Apart form that we see a 6 pin power port for the pcie slots.
Now for the mainstream: UD5H-BK
The black edition lives up to his name with abundance of black in the whole board.
We see a mix of sata express and sata ports with an M.2 socket again with a lack of PLX chip.
Now for its big brother : the UD7 TH
Apart form that there is a possibility of Thunderbolt 2 port in the rear I/O panel and a lack of PLX chip..again.
MSI
MSI suffered a few leak which were again redacted. later on MSI offered some official images with stuffs blurred out but leaving little to imagination.
The images we have here ranges form SFF to extreme high ends.
The IO looks completely backwards with Audio jacks at top and CLR_CMOS button at the button.The socket area sits low with the top being populated by the main power and SATA ports.
Then we have the extreme high-end Gaming 9 AC
The rear I/O and audio section is covered by a shield, the sticking out bit being the WiFI module.
There are some overclocking feature like the OC genie button along with voltage read points.On storage side you have 8 Sata ports with a M.2 Slots.
There are few more board images released by MSI:
Gaming 7
Gaming 5
Gaming 3
EVGA
EVGA however have came forward along with Asus to publish specifications and images.
Now too much to say about them i will let the pictures do the talking
On mini ITX, we have Z97 Stinger
It features a 10-layer PCB and supports up to two DDR3 2666Mhz DIMMs. Storage side we have four SATA 6Gbps ports and a single PCI-Express x16 slot. There is also a 5.1 audio support through a Creative Sound Core3D audio processor.
next up we have Z97 FTW for the affordable ATX segment.
The board is equipped with four PCI-Express x16 slots, eight SATA 6Gbps ports, four DDR3 DIMM slots,and a single M.2 connector.
and lastly comes the crème de la crème from EVGA : The Classified
Coming in an E-ATX form factor. The motherboard comes with four DIMM slots that support DDR3 modules and eight SATA 6Gbps ports. In addition, there are five PCI-Express x16 slots with dual Intel network controllers and a single mPCIe slot. We also have Triple BIOS support(yeah 3 profiles). We also have Lucid logix virtu support for those who want it.
Biostar
and lastly we have a small teaser from Biostar
Not much is known at the moment about them but we are sure that the board will be focused towards audio judging by the name.
Let us know about your thoughts on this upcoming boards.
Signing out
Sumon