Motherboards

AMD Released the 2990WX 32 Core Monster, ASUS Answers with the Zenith Extreme Alpha AMD made a remarkably huge splash with its 2nd gen Ryzen parts. Next up were the Threadripper 2nd gen updates. There were rumors abound of all kinds of craziness going in at the time. When AMD …

Welcome the Big Daddy of X299 boards from MSI Today we look at the new MSI MEG X299 Creation motherboard. X299 may be a bit long in the tooth for some, but with the recent refresh for Basin Falls, I think some new boards were necessary. The first showing of …

The MSI MPG Z390 Gaming EDGE AC Has Arrived!! Today we have on the bench the third of the initial 3 motherboards for testing the new Z390/9900K platform:  the MSI MPG Z390 Gaming EDGE AC. This board, much like the Gigabyte model we looked at recently, is a sub 200 dollar …

Gigabytes midrange take on Z390 is here! Today we have for you the Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi. Gigabyte has long made motherboards for consumers and also pushed the limits for the overclocking/XOC community with a staff of well adept overclockers at their disposal. Gigabyte has made arguably some of …

Z390 ROG to the extreme is here! We would like to introduce you to the ASUS ROG Maximus XI Extreme. ASUS and their Maximus series of boards have been synonymous with gamers, overclockers and overall enthusiasts over the many years since ROG or Republic of Gamers came to be. However, …

INTRODUCTION AMD’s Ryzen platform was one of the most highly anticipated launches in recent years, with everyone from industry insiders and media, to overclocking champions and gamers just waiting to see how these new multi-core processors performed. And while there have been some ups and downs along the way, many …

ROG MAXIMUS VIII IMPACT Introduction Hello hardware enthusiast. Today we look at one of the most impressive and awe inspiring manifestations of technology to grace the Bjorn3D lab, The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII IMPACT. The latest iteration of the Maximus IMPACT pushes the boundaries of what can be expected from a …

ASUS SABERTOOTH Z170 MARK 1 One bright sunny morning the design team at ASUS held a meeting, the topic being; “What can be done to make the new SABERTOOTH Z170 MARK 1 worthy of it’s name?” One employee suggested they bathe the motherboard in bright flashy colors and use sub …

Introduction ASUS was founded back in 1989 and has a long history in the computer hardware industry and their product line virtually encompasses all aspects of the computer hardware industry. Their product lines cover motherboards, graphics cards, headsets, mice, keyboards, networking, drives, tablets, notebooks, desktops, monitors and I am sure …

ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII EXTREME Every generation of chip-sets manufacturers carefully design and implement their Flagship offering and we wait with bated breath to see whats been put on the offering plate. The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII EXTREME is the top dog Flagship simply crammed with every feature a person can think of …

Hello hardware enthusiast. Today we take a look at EVGA’s Z170 FTW. One of three motherboards available from EVGA for the new Z170 platform along with the flagship Classified board, and the M-ATX Stinger. Available now on featuring a new BIOS GUI interface, a highly efficient VRM, a CPU socket that has 1.5X …

GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming 7 We just had the Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming G1 flagship board on our test bench and the Gigabyte GA-Z170-Gaming 7 definitely shows it’s relationship with the Flagship Board. From a first glance it looks like the Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7 didn’t get a PLX chip so graphics are going …

Asus Maximus VIII Hero (Z170 Chipset) The Asus Z107 Hero VIII was the initial launch board we received to review the Intel Core i7 6700 and we would like to thank our partners at Asus for the Hero VIII and their support during the Skylake 6700K Launch. Without their guidance …

Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming G1 Review, Game With Kings! It seldom happens that you come across a motherboard that covers every feature on your Motherboard Bucket list but Gigabyte has successfully fielded the GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 their flagship Z170 Skylake LGA 1151 board which comes close. Opening the box and just glancing at …

GIGABYTE X99 SLI Review, Excellence On A Budget! GIGABYTE has released an entire pack of motherboards based on the Intel X99 chipset: Champion, Gaming, and Super Overclock. And now GIGABYTE has released the X99-SLI board. From the first glance, the board looks to be chock full of enthusiast-level hardware, with …

The Asus Sabertooth line are built for toughness, reliability and thermal protection. Asus uses a battery of Military grade certification tests to ensure that their Sabertooth lineup will stand up to the toughest environments.  Cased in steel from the bottom and resilient plastic shielding from the top the Asus Sabertooth …

Introduction When it comes time for us to upgrade our computer, one of the first things we need to ask ourselves is what are we going to be using our computer for? Am I going to be playing games, uploading videos to my favorite video-sharing website, using it as an …

We aren’t strangers when it comes to ASRock products. For many years ASRock has represented high quality lower cost computer products that refuse to skimp on quality or performance. In our experience with ASRock you pick up one of their higher end boards and get looking at all the features …

When you’re looking at the 2011v3 Haswell E CPU family, nothing about it is inexpensive. The entry-level CPU is about $390 and it doesn’t even feature 40 full PCI-E lanes. The lowest tier CPU has 28 PCI-E lanes and you have to go to the second tray CPU, the Intel Core i7-5930K Haswell-E 6-Core …

The Asus X99 Deluxe is a popular choice among 2011v3 users, it falls between top end enthusiast boards and budget boards leaning toward top end more than budget. The board itself is a dark brown color with white accents and quite striking to the eye.  Heatsinks and rear panel I/O are …

Introduction – ASUS X99-E WS ASUS has many models of X99 shipping and one particular model that always interests me is the WS series of boards as they are tested to be enterprise class and then some with max capacity and normally extended connectivity along with component MTBF ratings that …

Introduction – ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME X99 has been around a bit now and the next board to hit our bench is what we have here today and it is no joke as it is the Rampage V Extreme or what many hold as the benchmark for every other board in …

Introduction – EVGA X99 Classified EVGA is one of those brands we have all seen come up and become a very strong force in the graphics card market and even motherboards. Their history is a bit of a roller coaster ride starting with NF series Nvidia chipset boards which no …

Introduction – MSI X99S XPOWER AC MSI has made motherboards and Graphics offerings for some time now and has recently extended its reach into the Notebook and all kinds of other accessory devices. Today we get the awesome opportunity to follow up the powerful and feature packed X99S Gaming 9 with …

Introduction The Athlon brand holds a very special place in the tech industry, as it was the first processor to reach 1 GHz. Back in its days, the Athlon CPUs give the Intel Pentium processors some serious competitions. AMD has kept the Athlon brand for almost a decade where it has gone through …

Introduction – ASUS Maximus  VII Formula Seems like just yesterday we were looking at the Maximus VI Formula from ASUS based on the Z87 and today we have the Z97 variant. The Maximus VII Formula and it actually looks alot like the previous Z87 variant which to me is not …

Introduction – MSI X99 Gaming 9 AC Hot on the heels of the ASUS board our second X99 to arrive is what we see today and its MSIs flagship gaming model the X99S Gaming 9 which is the top of the gaming board spectrum. We have seen gaming boards from …

Introduction – ASUS X99 Deluxe When X99 started to become a reality we noticed that every manufacturer was running very late on boards and before you know it ASUS delivered with a board. This does not exactly surprise me since ASUS has a huge engineering and R&D team so getting …

The long-awaited update to the enthusiasts platform is here, meet the Core i7 5960X To say X79 is getting long in the tooth would be putting it extremely mildly. X79 has been around a very long time and all the while the 8 and 9 series mainstream chipsets have come along …

Introduction – MSI Z97 Xpower Oh Overclocking, it seems to be whats makes the world go round some days and something that many motherboard manufacturers have really started to embrace as easier ways were found to do it. It used to be back in the old days (not that long …

Introduction – MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC MSI looks to be hitting Z97 pretty hard with not just a gaming board but a full line along with OC series boards and even standard boards so now this begs the question. If offering so many SKU’s will it pay off in better customer …

 Introduction – Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 Gigabyte is a well-known name in the component industry and for good reason as they have made motherboards and graphics cards for a very long time. Among them some great boards such as the X58 OC board, some great P45 boards and I’m sure many more I’m not …

Gigabyte’s F2A85XN-WIFI was one of the best mini-ITX board for the FM2 socket. With the release of the Kaveri (FM2+) APU, Gigabyte has updated their mini-ITX board with the latest A88X chipset. With the F2A88XN-WIFI, Gigabyte essentially retained the same overall design and the layout as the older board except …

Gigabyte’s G1.Sniper has a long history of targeting toward gamers. The board is designed with features that gamers seek the most: better audio quality, better network performance, and better cooling for overclocking, Dating back to the first G1.Sniper, Gigabyte has released various models of the G1.Sniper series: 3, 5, and …

Introduction – ASUS X79 Deluxe We recently looked at the X79 refresh from the ROG line newly optimized for top tier performance with the new Ivy-E chips and well not everyone needs that level of extreme feature set and compatibility so ASUS stepped it down a notch in some of …

Introduction – MSI Z87I Gaming and GTX 760 Gaming Mini MSI’s gaming line has now seen a few entries for board and GPU models and this set I have to say is extremely interesting as these models are made for the very popular mini PC builds which are becoming very …

Introduction – ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition Echoes of AC/DC ring in my head as I came up with this title, and it took everything in me not to have about a thousand different “Back in black” references but I think we can survive a few. ASUS seems to reserve …

Introduction – Biostar Z87X 3D Motherboard Biostar is one of those names you hear about but not as common as the “bigger” players in the component game but regardless of this they have a decent share in the more cost conscious market which is actually a very large segment to …

Introduction – MSI Z87M Gaming MSI has already had a few entries of its gaming line for Z87 and now there is a third with the board we are looking at today the Z87M Gaming. This board is the mATX version for those looking for a smaller form factor gaming …

Gigabyte GTX 780 Windforce OC When thinking graphics so many times names jump into out minds like EVGA, ASUS and whatnot but many times when you think about Gigabyte, graphics cards simply don’t jump to the forefront. Gigabyte is best known for their extensive motherboard offering while for some reason …