CES 2012: EVGA parties like it's socket 2011 in Viva Las Vegas. Dual-socket SR-X mobo, UV Plus+ 39 video out for USB3, PSUs

Subject: General Tech, Motherboards, Cases and Cooling, Shows and Expos | January 10, 2012 - 07:22 PM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: evga, CES 2012, CES

There are most commonly three types of booths in CES: a display of one or more new and innovative products to hope to blaze their very own trail, a display of one or more intriguing iterations on existing product lines, or a display of some sort of pasta or alcoholic beverage. This year EVGA appears to fit mostly into the middle category; I hear they make good chips, however. The three major iterations this year quite possibly could not be more diverse: a new dual-socket Xeon motherboard, new power supplies, and an update to their UV Plus+ USB video adapter.

There’s something ironic about HDMI and DVI products by EVGA.

Dual-Socket 2011 SR-X Xeon motherboard

Not to be outdone by their old pizza box-sized components, EVGA announced their new SR-X motherboard to bring a product like the SR-2 to socket 2011. This time around they retain their 12 DIMM slots update their PCI-E slots to the third generation with 4-way SLI possible. You can also expect 8 SAS/SATA ports to connect a large number of hard drives at 6Gbps to your computer. It is clear that EVGA has aimed this PC motherboard at enthusiasts who want what they want and have the credit to get it.

1500W, 1000W, 750W power supplies

EVGA has made a few power supplies in the past so why not add a few more products to their portfolio? Partially pictured above is the 1000W unit that can provide 82A over the 12V rail -- which should be useful to pair with a Quad-SLI SR-X rig; and if not, there’s the 1500W one with a stated “customizable number of 12V rails” whatever that actually means.

UV Plus+ 39 video out by USB 3.0

The general masses regularly ask for methods to connect their computers to their HDTV through their USB ports and are routinely shocked to find that it is not a simple cable solution. Ponder that, USB cannot do everything… or can it? EVGA updated their UV Plus+ 19 with their UV Plus+ 39 to add support for dual-monitor output and USB3.0 for higher bandwidth, though USB 2.0 is still supported. There is no word on whether the maximum resolution would be reduced in dual-monitor mode. If you are worried about graphics acceleration over a USB device, the driver created links to your real video card thus you still have access to your GPU for processing.

Now we just need to find out about their video cards.

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

Take a closer look at MSI's new Z77 motherboards

Subject: Motherboards, Shows and Expos | January 10, 2012 - 06:19 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Z77, msi, lga1155, Ivy Bridge, CES

You probably saw Scott's coverage of the unveiling of the new Z77 chipset based motherboards from Gigabyte which will support Intel's soon to be released Ivy Bridge family of processors.  This spells a return to LGA 1155, though don't expect your old Sandy Bridge processor to be able to take advantage of all the features of this new high end chipset.

MSI has two brand new boards they are showing off at CES 2012, the Z77A-GD80 and the Z77A-GD65.   The first will be their new flagship motherboard and will feature new versions of ClickBIOS, their UEFI implementation and Multi-BIOS overclocking helper which will allow you to save profiles and recover from BIOS corruption.  The board will continue their tradition of PCIe 3.0 compliance with three 16x slots and it will have four dual dual channel DIMM slots that can accept up to DDR3-2667.  They've also included four USB 3.0 and four SATA 6Gbps ports for your storage needs.

 The Z77A-G65 below sports the same overall features as the GD80 with some changes to the PCB.  Looking to the top of the board you can see the GD65 lacks a heatsink at the very top edge but you can still see that MSI has used Military Class III components on the motherboard and the always on USB charging port.

*update*  The missing link has been found that seperates the GD80 from the GD65 and that difference is none other than Thunderbolt.  The Z77A-GA80 has Thunderbolt support, the new interface which allows an external peice of hardware direct access to the PCIe bus and will allow transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps. That speed allows the use of devices like MSI's GUS II, an external video card enclosure that comes with an expensive and sometimes hard to find Thunderbolt cable.  That interface is not limited to GPUs, it will be interesting to see what use enthusiasts who purchase the Z77A-GD80 will put Thunderbolt to.

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

CES 2012: GIGABYTE unveils Z77 -- big, small, gigabytesized

Subject: General Tech, Motherboards, Shows and Expos | January 10, 2012 - 04:45 AM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: gigabyte, CES 2012, CES

The first day of CES is nearly to a close and while I escape the blisters on my feet due to my location a few time zones and one border away from the organized chaos, the callusing of my fingertips has just begun. Allow us to each stretch our hands out, loosen our wrists, and prepare to indulge on distilled product announcements and testimony of how awesome various TVs look. Since we are a computer hardware website, how about indulging in a jackpot of information about Gigabyte’s next generation of Z77 Ivy Bridge motherboards?

So… uh… did I win?

The Z77 chipset will be Intel’s higher-end platform for the upcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs as well as support for the previous generation of Sandy Bridge processors. While there are some 60-series chipsets that support Ivy Bridge with a BIOS update I am sure Gigabyte, for one, hopes you upgrade to a motherboard more suited for the CPU.

Perhaps you would like a 3D BIOS with that?

Gigabyte decided to attack the user-interface within the BIOS and chose its weapon to be 3D graphics with their X79 motherboards for Sandy Bridge-E. Tim wrote a little piece on it last November and it looks like the product had enough potential to continue pressing the issue with their Z77 line. The 3D BIOS can also be dropped down into Advanced Mode for those who are not afraid of the more traditional BIOS layout; the advanced mode will apparently still be prettied up, just not at the sacrifice of functionality.

Big sniper, little sniper, green sniper, Killer sniper.

Two motherboards announced during CES stem from the G1.Sniper product line: one ATX (3), and one Micro-ATX (M3). BigFoot Systems has their Killer (brand name, not adjective) technology present in these products with the larger board also containing a second Intel Gigabit network adapter.

Motherboards for small businesses.

Gigabyte ended their press release with a few notes about their small business products. As expected, they focused their motherboard on the core needs of what a small business would desire: remote monitoring, backup, and durability.

Setting its sights on the small business market, GIGABYTE will demonstrate the B75M-D3H motherboard that represents a new product range featuring the ability to remotely monitor and manage PC health, installed software, data backup, energy saving and connectivity. This allows system integrators to add value to their products by offering these services to small businesses with between 1 and 6 PCs. Key features and selling points for these models will be manageability, affordability and GIGABYTE’s Ultra Durable design quality.

What do you think about Gigabyte’s product line? Do you desire a Micro ATX gaming machine for your desk or perhaps your home theatre cabinet? Do you own a small business? 

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

MSI Launches New X79 Flagship Big Bang-XPower II Motherboard

Subject: Motherboards | January 5, 2012 - 01:44 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: x79, msi, motherboard, big bang II, big bang 2

MSI is hoping to make a "big bang" with their new flagship Big Bang-XPower II X79 based motherboard. The board itself is full sized ATX, and sports a dark matte gray PCB with glossy black connectors and heat-sinks. The rear IO is aluminum and the PCH heat-sink has six copper heat-pipes (or supa' pipes as we like to call them around the office). The board has quite a few overclocker and enthusiast friendly features.

Specifically, the new Big Bang II is based on the X79 chipset and is ready to accept a Sandy Bridge-E (Socket 2011) processor. A total of 8 DIMM slots makes for some quad channel goodness, and MSI claims that the board will be able to support up to 128 GB (RAM Drive anyone!?) of RAM when 16GB DIMMS become available. Further, the motherboard is PCI-E 3.0 compliant and is ready for 4-way SLI or Crossfire multi-gpu setups in addition to sound cards and RAID controllers thanks to its seven total PCI-E expansion slots.

All this kit is going to need quite a bit of power, and MSI has gone so far as to brand their motherboard with the "Xtreme Power Design," which seems to indicate they mean serious business. More than the name, the two 8 pin and 1 6 pin (in addition to traditional 24 pin ATX power) connectors for the CPU and Graphics/PCI-E 3 devices respectively. The two CPU power connectors deliver 300 watts while the VGA connector can provide an additional 150 watts of power to compliment the total maximum power draw of 770 watts (!). (Needless to say, I would need a new PSU to push this board to its max). Managing this power is a 22 phase PWM "with hybrid design power" using solid and Hi-c capacitors. The VRM area of the board is massive, in other words.

The overclocker friendly features include voltage check pins for CPU, RAM, and chipset, and a backup BIOS with accompanying switch. Further, a Direct Overclock button to adjust the CPU BCLK (in intervals as small as .1MHz), and power and reset buttons on the board itself are also included. Last up is a feature called PCI-E CeaseFire, which allows users to completely turn off graphics cards without needing to physically remove them from the motherboard by using a series of switches next to the Direct OC buttons. MSI claims that the Big Bang-XPower II is "the optimal weapon for enthusiast overclockers to break world records."

Rear IO includes a PS/2 port, six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, six analog audio jacks, S/PDIF optical and coaxial audio outputs, a Clear CMOS button, and a Firewire port.

Needless to say, this board boasts quite a few features! More information can be found here.

Mixed results from Gigabyte's mid-range GA-X79-UD5

Subject: Motherboards | January 2, 2012 - 02:25 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: x79, gigabyte, X79-UD5, lga 2011, Sandy Bridge E

A review of Gigabyte's mid-ranged X79-UD5 motherboard has appeared on [H]ard|OCP, though from the $340 price tag it is hard to call it mid-ranged.  It sports three PCIe 3.0 16x slots, though one runs at only 8x, as well as two PCIe 2.0 1x slots and even an old PCI slot.  For storage a half dozen SATA 6Gbps ports are bolstered by four SATA 3Gbps ports, four USB 3.0 ports and over a dozen USB 2.0 ports.  [H]'s experience with the board was mixed, while it was stable during their tests, Gigabyte recently release a statement which seems to imply some users were experiencing heat issues when overclocking that were bad enough to damage hardware.  As well they were unimpressed with Gigabyte's UEFI implementation and found it hard to navigate.  When those issues are combined with the high price, [H] didn't feel this was a board that they could recommend.

"Gigabyte brings us another beautiful board in the form of the X79-UD5. Should this board be on your short list or is beauty only PCB deep? See how this LGA 2011 socket board stacks up with the Sandy Bridge E boards we have seen so far. This UD5 model is feature rich for a decent price, but, does it blend?"

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Motherboards

• Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 @ AnandTech
• MSI Z68A-GD80 G3 Z68 Motherboard Review @ Hardware Canucks
• MSI Big Bang-XPower II (X79) @ VR-Zone
• ECS X79R-AX @ Tweaktown
• ASUS P9X79 Deluxe Intel LGA 2011 @ techPowerUp
• ASRock X79 Extreme9 @ TweakTown
• ECS X79R-AX Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
• ASRock X79 Extreme4-M @ TweakTown
• Z68 Motherboard Roundup Part 2 @ OCC
• Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi Supreme Motherboard Review @ ThinkComputers
• GA-Z68XP-UD5 Motherboard Review @ Hi Tech Legion
• Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD Motherboard Review @ PCSTATS
• BIOS Option Of The Week - Interrupt 19 Capture @ Tech ARP
• Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 @ Funky Kit
• ASUS 990FX Sabertooth @ Bjorn3D
• MSI 990FXA-GD80 @ Bjorn3D
• ASRock A75M-ITX @ kitguru
• Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 Socket AM3+ @ X-bit labs

ASUS ROG welcomes 2011 with the Rampage IV Extreme

Subject: Motherboards | December 19, 2011 - 02:30 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ROG, Rampage IV Extreme, lga 2011, asus

ASUS' Republic of Gamers family now has a Socket 2011 motherboard in the form of the Rampage IV Extreme.  The ROG boards are the highest end of ASUS' motherboard and the prices reflect this, the board [H]ard|OCP reviewed is $450.  For that you do get a lot, four PCIe 3.0 16x slots of which three can operate at 16x speeds, four SATA 3Gbps ports and four SATA 6Gbps ports, eight USB 3.0 ports and up to a full dozen USB 2.0 ports.  A large assortment of connectors and extras comes packaged with the board, as well as a new version of TurboV EVO, ASUS' monitoring and overclocking software.  Overclocking proved difficult, no matter which cooling solution they tried the CPU would slowly heat up until it began triggering alarms or simply crashed.  As this is an early version of the board you can expect the success rate to change somewhat; head to the review to see the long list of extras ASUS included with this impressive X79 motherboard.

"ASUS expands its ROG line once again to include offerings based on Intel’s latest X79 chipset and support for the new Sandy Bridge-E processors. The ASUS Rampage IV Extreme comes from a long line of Rampage motherboards most of which have been excellent products. Our expectations are extremely high for this "Extreme" offering."

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Motherboards

• MSI X79A-GD65 8D Review @ Bjorn3D
• ASUS P9X79 WS Motherboard Review @ Hi Tech Legion
• ASRock X79 Extreme4 @ Tweaktown
• ASRock X79 Extreme9 X79 Motherboard Review @ eTeknix
• Gigabyte X79-UD7 @ Bjorn3D
• ECS X79R-AX Intel LGA 2011 @ techPowerUp
• Intel DX79SI Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
• ASRock X79 Extreme4-M and X79 Extreme4 Review – Sandy Bridge-E meets mATX @ AnandTech
• ASUS P9X79 Pro @ Bjorn3D
• ASUS P9X79 Pro @ Tweaktown
• Asus P8Z68-V LX Z68 Motherboard Review @ eTeknix
• EVGA Z68 FTW Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
• Gigabyte Z68XP-UD4 Review @ HCW
• BIOS Option Of The Week - DRAM Ratio H/W Strap @ TechARP
• Biostar TA990FXE: First Mainboard with Native Bulldozer Support @ X-bit Labs
• Asus M5A99X EVO and Asus M5A97 EVO: two Simpler Mainboards for AMD Bulldozer @ X-bit Labs
• Sapphire Pure Black 990FX Motherboard and Radeon 6450 FleX Edition Review @ HardwareHeaven
• Sapphire Pure Black 990FX @ kitguru
• ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard Review @Hi Tech Legion

Another Z68 motherboard from ASRock; boom or bust?

Subject: Motherboards | December 9, 2011 - 01:15 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: asrock, z68, z68 pro3

Earlier in the month Steve reviewed the ASRock Z68 Extreme 7 Gen 3 motherboard and handed it a Silver Award.  This so called budget brand has been steadily improving over the years and the Extreme 7 was ahead of the curve.  Was that a one off success or can they match the performance of that board with the ASRock Z68 Pro3?  [H]ard|OCP just polished off a review of that board, much less intricate than the Extreme 7 but still based on the same chipset so it should be capable of similar performance.  Will this board live up to the quality we have seen recently or is this board bargain bin bound?  Read on and see.

"It’s easy to get hung up on the high end boards. Despite the flare, the coverage, and the amazing features, the bulk of the population and even the bulk of the enthusiast community rarely buys such boards. It is with this in mind that we examine a budget solution in the form of the ASRock Z68 Pro3. Low budget, low expectations?"

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Motherboards

• Asus P8Z68-V LX @ Kitguru
• ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe Motherboard Review @ OCIA
• ASUS Sabertooth X79 @ Tweaktown
• Intel DX79SI @ Tweaktown
• MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Motherboard @ Hardware Secrets
• BIOSTAR TA990FXE AMD 990FX Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews
• Zotac A75-ITX WiFi Review @ OCC
• Zotac A75-ITX WiFi @ Bjorn3D
• ECS A990FXM-A Socket AM3+ @ techPowerUp