Motherboards

Further to our last piece which we detailed Intel's issue to motherboard vendors to follow with stock power settings for Intel's 14th and 13th Gen Core series processors, Intel has now issued a follow-up statement to this. Over the last week or so, motherboard vendors quickly released firmware updates with a new profile called 'Intel Baseline', which motherboard vendors assumed would address the instability issues. As it turns out, Intel doesn't seem to accept this as technically, these Intel Baseline profiles are not to be confused with Intel's default specifications. This means that Intel's Baseline profiles seemingly give the impression that they are operating at default settings, hence the terminology 'baseline' used, but this still opens motherboard vendors to use their interpretations of MCE...

The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others

AMD’s budget motherboard range is often at times more successful than the bigger, full fat versions. Users have in the past got almost all of the same chipset features...

102 by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on 6/16/2020

ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi Review: The Tale of Two Motherboards

Some of the recent discussions around motherboard design are whether the motherboard manufacturers are actually adhering to the CPU vendor specifications. If a motherboard manufacturer improves the base power...

34 by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on 6/11/2020

ASRock Rack Offers Rome mATX Motherboard with only 6 Memory Channels

One of the items that makes a motherboard immediately standout is the amount of memory slots it has. For mainstream platforms, having two or four memory slots, for dual...

28 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/8/2020

GIGABYTE Announces Z490 Aorus Ultra G2 Motherboard, with G2 Esports Tie-In

Collaborations between hardware vendors and Esports teams isn't a new thing, but it is becoming an apparent and common trend within the industry. GIGABYTE and G2 Esports has announced...

9 by Gavin Bonshor on 6/5/2020

The Biostar Racing Z490GTN Review: $200 for Comet Lake mini-ITX

Small form factor boards are always a key talking point for any desktop market. The usual breakdown on Mini-ITX sales for any given generation is usually around 10%, and...

40 by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on 6/5/2020

MSI MPG Z490 Carbon EK X: LGA1200 Motherboard with an EKWB Monoblock

In one of the coolest collaborations of the year so far, MSI and EK Water Blocks have come together to create a new Z490 motherboard, the MSI MPG Z490...

18 by Gavin Bonshor on 6/3/2020

Biostar's Two New H410 Motherboards: H410MHG and H410MH

Not only did Intel unveil its Z490 motherboard chipset for Intel's 10th generation desktop processors, but it also announced its more budget-friendly chipsets. Biostar has announced two new micro-ATX...

26 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/29/2020

The ASRock Z490 Taichi Motherboard Review: Punching LGA1200 Into Life

In our first Intel Z490 motherboard review, the ASRock Z490 Taichi takes center stage. With its recognizable Taichi clockwork inspired design, a 12+2 power delivery, three PCIe 3.0 x4...

63 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/27/2020

AMD's B550 Motherboards Start Appearing Online

Today is the next stage of the AMD AM4 B550 motherboard rollout: numerous vendors have started listing its models in place of an expected launch on June 16th. One...

51 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/21/2020

New Q470E and H420E Embedded Motherboards From ASRock

Off the back of Intel's announcement of its 10th generation Comet Lake vPro processors for the 400-series chipset, ASRock Industrial has announced some details about its incoming product stack...

14 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/14/2020

ASRock Rack Announces W480D4U, Micro-ATX for Intel Xeon W-1200

With Intel recently announcing its Xeon-W1200 series product stack for W480, ASRock's server arm, ASRock Rack, has lifted the lid on one its micro-ATX model based on the W480...

10 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/14/2020

The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

Users looking to build their own dual EPYC workstation or system, using completely off-the-shelf components, do not have a lot of options. Users can buy most of the CPUs...

37 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/13/2020

MSI Unveils MEG Z490 Unify Series: Unassuming Style

With the release of Intel's 10th generation desktop processors (Comet Lake-S) looming ever closer, MSI has announced a pair of new Z490 models, the MSI MEG Z490 Unify and...

28 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/11/2020

Intel Z490 Motherboards Available For Pre-Order: From $150 to $1299

In preparation for the launch of Intel's Z490 chipset and Intel's 10th generation Comet Lake desktop processors, Z490 motherboards are now available to pre-order from various retailers. For entry-level...

32 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/6/2020

The ASRock Z490 Aqua: Thunderbolt 3, PCIe 4.0 Ready, Water Cooled

Following a resurgence of motherboards decked out with custom monoblocks, ASRock has announced details on its Z490 Aqua. It includes a familiar aluminium plated copper custom monoblock, with just...

18 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/5/2020

First ATX12VO Consumer Motherboard: The ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4SR

A blog post from Intel has showcased the first consumer motherboard with the ATX12VO power standard from ASRock, and we reached out to ASRock for more details. They have...

47 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/5/2020

The ASRock Rack Z490D4U-2L2T, Micro-ATX Server For LGA1200

Off the back of the announcement of a substantial amount of Z490 motherboards designed for Intel's 10th generation desktop processors, ASRock Rack has announced a server-focused model. The ASRock...

10 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/5/2020

The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined

After another long wait for a new Intel platform, Comet Lake and the 400 series finally descends. Here we get a new socket, support for up to 10-cores with...

52 by Gavin Bonshor on 4/30/2020

The ASRock Rack EPYCD8-2T Motherboard Review: From Naples to Rome

It's no secret that AMD is looking to carve out a bigger share in the server market with their enterprise EPYC processors, and much fanfare has been made about...

35 by Gavin Bonshor on 4/20/2020

Intel H81 Chipset EOL'd: Long Lived Haswell Chipset to be Retired

Intel has announced that it will be discontinuing some of its Lynx Point based chipsets which are most commonly associated with its Haswell processors on socket LGA 1150. Along...

5 by Gavin Bonshor on 4/1/2020

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