A Brief Look at Some Upcoming 7-Series Motherboards

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

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..

ECS Z77H2-AX

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.