14 DAY TRIAL // After being made official at the end of June, the Z68 Fatal1ty Professional Gen 3 motherboard, that includes two PCI Express 3.0 compatible expansion slots, has now started shipping and is already available for purchase in Japan.
ASRock's motherbard is built around the Z68 Express chipset and is compatible with all of the current second generation Core, as well as with the upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge, LGA 1155 processors.
These draw their power from a 12+6 phase digital PWM, which is cooled by two separate passive aluminum heatsinks connected together via a heatpipe.
Outside of the two PCI Express x16 Gen 3 slots, the ASRock board also supports two 32-bit legacy PCI ports, a pair of PCIe x1 ports, as well as a third PCI Express x16 socket that has only 4 PCIe lanes routed to it.
Storage is provided thanks to four SATA 6Gbps and six SATA 3Gbps ports, while an additional eSATA connector is installed on the rear I/O shield.
This is joined by no less than four USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, a pair of Gigabit LAN connectors, one VGA and two HDMI video outputs as well as 7.1-channel audio with digital S/PDIF out and a Clear CMOS button.
Throughout the motherboard, users will find all sort of other overclocking oriented features such as on-board Power and Reset buttons and a BIOS debug display. A pin header for adding two USB 3.0 ports is also available.
The ASRock Z68 Fatal1ty Professional Gen 3 is already on sale in Japan for 29,980 Yen (about $371 US), but Europe is also expected to get it soon, with prices starting at €223.
Sadly, users won't find much use for the two PCI Express 3.0 slots at this point in time, as the first Ivy Bridge LGA 1155 processors to get support for this technology won't arrive until March or April of 2012. (via Akiba PC Hotline)