Monday, October 10th 2011
ASRock X79 Extreme7 Pictured
ASRock is readying is new, high-end socket LGA2011 motherboard targeting the upper-most tier of the PC enthusiast market, the X79 Extreme7. This board will be a part of the company's first wave of LGA2011 motherboards, which are slated for mid-November, 2011. Pictures scored by XFastest reveal the board to be filled to the brim with features. The CPU socket is powered by a 16-phase VRM making use of high-grade chokes, and server-grade poscap capacitors.
The socket is wired to six DDR3 DIMM slots arranged in sets of three on either sides of the socket, powered by a 4-phase VRM. Among channels A, B, C, and D; channels B and D have two DIMM slots wired, so if you have four DDR3 modules, you should populate slots 0, 2, 3, and 5; to take advantage of quad-channel DDR3 memory. There are heatsinks over the memory VRM areas, that are connected to the heatsink over the CPU VRM using heat pipes.Expansion slots include five PCI-Express x16, two of these can run at full-bandwidth PCI-E 3.0 x16, four at PCI-E 3.0 x8 bandwidth (depending on how the slots are populated with add-on cards), one of these is wired to the X79 PCH and is PCI-E 2.0 x4 capable. There's a legacy PCI slot, too.
Storage connectivity includes four SATA 6 Gb/s ports, seven internal SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and one eSATA 3 Gb/s. Other connectivity options include six USB 3.0 ports (two on the rear panel, four via headers), 8+2 channel HD audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, two gigabit Ethernet connections, FireWire, and a number of USB 2.0 ports.
The socket is wired to six DDR3 DIMM slots arranged in sets of three on either sides of the socket, powered by a 4-phase VRM. Among channels A, B, C, and D; channels B and D have two DIMM slots wired, so if you have four DDR3 modules, you should populate slots 0, 2, 3, and 5; to take advantage of quad-channel DDR3 memory. There are heatsinks over the memory VRM areas, that are connected to the heatsink over the CPU VRM using heat pipes.Expansion slots include five PCI-Express x16, two of these can run at full-bandwidth PCI-E 3.0 x16, four at PCI-E 3.0 x8 bandwidth (depending on how the slots are populated with add-on cards), one of these is wired to the X79 PCH and is PCI-E 2.0 x4 capable. There's a legacy PCI slot, too.
Storage connectivity includes four SATA 6 Gb/s ports, seven internal SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and one eSATA 3 Gb/s. Other connectivity options include six USB 3.0 ports (two on the rear panel, four via headers), 8+2 channel HD audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, two gigabit Ethernet connections, FireWire, and a number of USB 2.0 ports.