ASRock Unveils its Intel-based 8-Series Motherboards

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Sakkura

Sakkura

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They've cut down the number of power phases compared to their Z77 boards. The Z77 Extreme3 has 8 + 3 power phases, the Z77 Extreme6 (and Extreme4) has 8 + 4; but the Z87 Extreme 6 only 8 + 2.

Wonder if they'll put different heatsinks on the VRMs. Looks like a heatsink-less prototype since the chipset is exposed too.

Oh, and it's nice to see that all of them have 6 native SATA3 ports. Now we just need a new SATA revision so consumer SSD performance can progress unhindered. It sucks that just as SATA3 is really becoming ubiquitous, SSDs are already bumping up against its bandwidth limit.
 
Onus

Onus

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The Z87 Extreme6 also appears to have a mSATA slot on it. Very cool.
I'm a little leery of the un-sinked VRMs that Sakkura pointed out. Hopefully the final release versions will have heatsinks on them.
 
rebel1280

rebel1280

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[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]The Z87 Extreme6 also appears to have a mSATA slot on it. Very cool.I'm a little leery of the un-sinked VRMs that Sakkura pointed out. Hopefully the final release versions will have heatsinks on them.[/citation]
Dude, good catch on the mSATA port!
 
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Junoh315

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[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]The Z87 Extreme6 also appears to have a mSATA slot on it. Very cool.I'm a little leery of the un-sinked VRMs that Sakkura pointed out. Hopefully the final release versions will have heatsinks on them.[/citation]


The final version will definitely have heatsinks on them. You can see the outline for one of the heatsinks in the Extreme6's picture. That white outline shows where the heatsink goes. There is one for the CPU and it looks like there's one for the GPU. I'm not sure if it will have multiple heatsinks though. I don't really like the design of these motherboards. None of them look like they'd be good to use compared to my Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H.
 
warezme

warezme

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How is 4 DIMM slots and support for only 32GB of RAM, an "impressive" feature? Impressive would be 6 or 8 DIMM slots with support for 64GB of memory or more. My laptop has 4 slots and 32GB of RAM.
 
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blackscreen

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[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]The Z87 Extreme6 also appears to have a mSATA slot on it. Very cool.I'm a little leery of the un-sinked VRMs that Sakkura pointed out. Hopefully the final release versions will have heatsinks on them.[/citation]

Judging by the position of the screw standoff, that's an mPCI-e port, not mSATA.
 
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chriz78

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[citation][nom]ubercake[/nom]Sweet! I'd use the hell out of those legacy PCI slots!Seriously though, why are they still putting these things on new motherboards? Just have them laying around or something?[/citation]

I agree, ASRock seems to put more legacy stuff on their boards than other manufacturers. I don't think they should be putting VGA outputs on them either, I wish VGA would die. Even sound cards have been available in PCI express for quite a while now.
 
goodguy713

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[citation][nom]warezme[/nom]How is 4 DIMM slots and support for only 32GB of RAM, an "impressive" feature? Impressive would be 6 or 8 DIMM slots with support for 64GB of memory or more. My laptop has 4 slots and 32GB of RAM.[/citation]

ehh your laptop ram also costs an arm and a leg @ 32GB .. but you have a point you would think 64GB would be warranted but im sure the higher end boards will support that much .. even with 16 GB my system never used more then 8GB worth of ram.. so its a mute point unless your trying to run a ram disk.
 
goodguy713

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Much agreed .. why do they still have them? old school pci 1x slots haha only thing i can think of is the pci modem cards you know for like dial up or something .. or possibly older audio cards. Usb / firewire port cards.. you get used to living in the city with access to dsl or fiber and there are still a lot of small towns places with only dial up connections.
 
ubercake

ubercake

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I agree. I wish they'd force everyone to digital just like cable in the U.S.

I guess the argument for the VGA connection is there are many lower-cost, but good monitors being sold with VGA cables included and DVI cables excluded (even when there is a DVI connection on the monitor). This is good for people that don't keep extra cables around.

 
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edlivian

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I dont understand why intel is changing the socket type when z87 has same specifications as z77. If they supported ddr4 or ddr5 I would say its worth a socket change.

But this socket change is hardly bringing anything new to the table.
 
azraa

azraa

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[citation][nom]edlivian[/nom]I dont understand why intel is changing the socket type when z87 has same specifications as z77. If they supported ddr4 or ddr5 I would say its worth a socket change.But this socket change is hardly bringing anything new to the table.[/citation]
Connectivity seems to have changed a lot, that has been a huge issue since freaking always with Intel platforms.
 
InvalidError

InvalidError

Titan
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[citation][nom]Sakkura[/nom]They've cut down the number of power phases compared to their Z77 boards. The Z77 Extreme3 has 8 + 3 power phases, the Z77 Extreme6 (and Extreme4) has 8 + 4; but the Z87 Extreme 6 only 8 + 2.Wonder if they'll put different heatsinks on the VRMs.[/citation]
Haswell CPUs are supposed to have a 320 phases on-package VRM for Vcore, which takes the single largest VRM load off the motherboard manufacturers' hands.

So I would expect Haswell motherboards to feature much simpler VRMs since they only need to supply DIMM and miscellaneous other low-load voltages.

[citation][nom]edlivian[/nom]I dont understand why intel is changing the socket type when z87 has same specifications as z77. If they supported ddr4 or ddr5 I would say its worth a socket change.But this socket change is hardly bringing anything new to the table.[/citation]
It is supposed to bring on-package VRM so a socket change would be required to bring 12V on-package to feed that.
 
G

Guest

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I have a question. If they are having 320 integrated voltage regulators, then why is there still so many phases around the sockets? Are they not going forward with the regulators or they allowing the mobo companies to augment the the internal regulators? /confused
 
enewmen

enewmen

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No Thunderbolt or Displayport?
Doesn't look much different than panther point 7-series.
If these boards are the high-end, then I'm sure the low-mid mITX boards won't have Thunderbolt or Displayport.
What about 4k HDMI ?
 
InvalidError

InvalidError

Titan
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[citation][nom]c4fusion[/nom]I have a question. If they are having 320 integrated voltage regulators, then why is there still so many phases around the sockets? Are they not going forward with the regulators or they allowing the mobo companies to augment the the internal regulators? /confused[/citation]
While VCCcore may have moved on-package, you still need VCCio for the PCIe lanes, DMI bus and all the other TMDS links and since the CPU is the biggest load on most of those, it would make sense to put those VRMs around the CPU too. You also need the RAM's VRM and the CPU is the biggest IO load on that voltage rail too.

Some of the extra VRMs around the CPU may simply have been relocated from elsewhere to fill the space that got freed up around the socket.
 
InvalidError

InvalidError

Titan
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[citation][nom]enewmen[/nom]What about 4k HDMI ?[/citation]
How much does the most affordable 4k screen on the market cost?

If you are going to rely on the GT3 IGP for graphics because you cannot afford a discrete card, I doubt you can afford a 4k display. Performance-wise, I doubt the GT3 will be able to handle anything beyond 1080p reasonably well.
 
ojas

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[citation][nom]Sakkura[/nom]They've cut down the number of power phases compared to their Z77 boards. The Z77 Extreme3 has 8 + 3 power phases, the Z77 Extreme6 (and Extreme4) has 8 + 4; but the Z87 Extreme 6 only 8 + 2.[/citation]
Maybe because Haswell has an integrated VRM?
 
MauveCloud

MauveCloud

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I thought one would want spacing between the video cards when doing 3-way sli/xf (unless watercooling), meaning putting them in positions 1, 4, and 7 would be best, but that Z87 Extreme6 only allows graphics cards in positions 2, 5, and 7.
 
Soda-88

Soda-88

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[citation][nom]Sakkura[/nom]They've cut down the number of power phases compared to their Z77 boards. The Z77 Extreme3 has 8 + 3 power phases, the Z77 Extreme6 (and Extreme4) has 8 + 4; but the Z87 Extreme 6 only 8 + 2.Wonder if they'll put different heatsinks on the VRMs.[/citation]
You clearly haven't done your homework on Haswell platform.
 
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