A Brief Look at Some Upcoming 7-Series Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on March 9, 2012 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- H77
- Z77
ASRock
ASRock are now becoming a stable option when it comes to buying motherboards. As a company, they are now producing a large amount of good product with an expected ten million motherboard sales in 2012, and seem to have enough backing to perhaps push it a little forward ahead of other competitors. When it comes to releasing new chipsets, ASRock have recently always been releasing their Extreme series (numbered currently from 3 to 9), and their gaming Fatal1ty series for more enthusiast style users. For the most part, their cheaper offerings often hit a nice price/feature ratio that is comfortable on the wallet.
For the 7-series, ASRock have fully updated their website with models we expect ASRock to launch:
H77M
H77 Pro4-M
H77 Pro4/MVP
Z77 Pro4
Z77 Extreme4-M
Z77 Extreme4
Z77 Extreme6
Fatal1ty Z77 Professional
Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M
Fatal1ty Z77 Performance
ASRock Z77 Extreme6
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If we extrapolate from our look at ASRock boards for P67 and X79, the Z77 Extreme4 and Z77 Extreme6 should be a pair of good boards to consider out of the starting block. As we can see, the Z77 Extreme6 goes all out on the black and gold livery ASRock demonstrated with X79, and plugs in a USB 3.0 front panel which doubly acts as a SSD holder. On the board itself, we still see a 4-pin molex connector rear its ugly head again above the PCIe ports, and if I'm very much mistaken, we also have a Floppy drive port on the south side of the board. I did quiz ASRock once as to why they're putting legacy ports back onto some of their lineup, and the response I got was 'some people want that functionality'. I could perhaps see the requirement in industry when a 6-figure piece of industrial equipment still uses floppy drives (and the cost of upgrading that equipment is too high for USB), however I would relegate that function to the lower end of the spectrum.
ECS
ECS have always been somewhat odd when trying to predict what of their main channel products will reach the market. They tackle each chipset differently, deciding what proportion of the market will invest in it, then design products at various price points to suit that need. This is all despite being a primarily OEM manufacturer and distributor. When it comes to the 7-series chipsets, it is clear that while they will be more important than Sandy Bridge-E was, it could swing either way whether they will outstrip Sandy Bridge before we get Intel's next architecture down the line.
Nevertheless, ECS have dutifully supplied a couple of images of their top-end upcoming boards, and to be honest, I'd say they were taking a leaf out of ASRock's book..
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ECS Z77H2-AX
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The Z77H2-AX is ECS' answer to the 7-series, and it looks packed with functionality. If I'm not mistaken, if we ignore the ASRock-like gold and black, we have a mSATA port blow the SATA ports, and built in Wifi and Bluetooth modules on the IO panel. This is despite also having video outputs. The ECS board I reviewed for X79, whilst it was under rebate, was quite a bargain in terms of functionality and price, so I hope that ECS can deliver similar for the 7-series.
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mbf - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Is ECC support on the P8Z77 WS confirmed? Last generation ECC for Sandy Bridge-based (Xeon) processors was only introduced with the P8B WS, which uses the C206 chipset, and not, for instance, the P8P67 WS Revolution, which uses the P67 chipset.ASUS itself doesn't say one way or the other (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155...
Don't get me wrong. I'd _really_ love ECC support on the P8Z77 WS, but somehow I doubt it.
ven - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
at least this time intel didn't do any crazy things like limiting the IGP access to selected chipset (P67,they purposely removed that feature just because for that lucid Logix virtu thing(Z68), I think it doesn't create any difference most of them used the discrete graphics card as the primary graphics engine.completely useless feature)one thing i hate with 7 series is still it is supporting only 2 SATA-III port, those marvell and asmedia ports performance are no match for the intel.
Still no hint of thunderbolt,maybe waiting for haswell.
st.bone - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Oh Thunderbolt is here.... Check this out:Thunderbolt Port Pictured on MSI Z77A-GD80
http://www.techpowerup.com/161912/Thunderbolt-Port...
ven - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
is it native to Z77? then why didn't all motherboards has this feature?mmaestro - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Would love to see some stuff on the H77 boards. SRT on an entry-level board should give some great idiot-proof performance boosting for the folks who just need a basic system to deal with media, web browsing, email, and office apps.MobiusStrip - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Wasn't Thunderbolt supposed to be on-board finally?mbf - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link
No, USB3 is finally on-board. Thunderbolt is just no longer an "Apple Exclusive". Apart from that, the Thunderbolt chip costs a pretty penny as well.Arbie - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link
I hope you'll review the Asus Sabertooth Z77 board, with some emphasis on its thermal armor and fan control suite.Reviews of the board's predecessors have either left the thermal armor with no fan, or have installed the fan backwards. Asus evidently provides no guidance on this, and may not even include the fan. As a result, there have been no good reviews of what the armor achieves.
The design of the armor shows that an exhaust fan is expected. This will pull warm air out of the covered areas and dump it into the space above the fan port (between CPU cooler and graphics board etc). This should help the protected motherboard components run cooler. However, there remain questions of physical interference between the fan and the card slots, especially the 1x slot nearest the fan port. Also, what fan size is required, and is there a best choice for this?
I'd also like to know what thermal sensors are supported by the mobo and its BIOS, how many PWM headers there are and what they control on, and any other details that will help plan a build.
Asus stands out in its support for air cooling of an overclocked rig in a real-world PC case, and I think that what they offer should be evaluated for its benefits. Reviewers too often shortcut or simply ignore such provisions because they are testing on an open chassis. So most manufacturers feel free to shortcut the issues as well. But consumers buying the boards will be using them very differently, and case cooling is VERY important.
Far less important to me are extra slots and PLX-type chips for SLI graphics boards. Given the glacial improvements in PC games, a single board is all I need or want. Given the practical drawbacks, I'd bet that only a small fraction of enthusiasts (which is already a very small group) actually run two boards.
Thanks
colonelclaw - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
It's a bit annoying that none of these chip-sets supports 8 RAM slots, but then I guess that would be cannibalising the more expensive kit. As someone who works in 3D graphics for a living it makes me slightly wince to see that Asus board labeled 'Workstation' with just 4 RAM slots. Intel sure likes to squeeze as much money out of us as they can now that they make the undisputed best processors, not that I can blame them for doing so, after all they're not a charity.Are there any chips that have more than 4 cores/8 threads that you can put in any of these boards? It's funny, 4 cores seemed like like so much just a few years ago, nowadays it feels like the bare minimum acceptable.
coachingjoy - Sunday, March 18, 2012 - link
Any mITX goodness available?Thanks.