With the launch of Sandy Bridge-E just around the corner, it was just a matter of time before LGA 2011 motherboard would start making their way to various retailers out there and one of the first such solutions to make its appearance is the ASRock X79 Extreme7 which was just listed in Europe.
This is
ASRock's most advanced board based on the X79 Express chipset and the price reflects this as the Extreme7 was listed for no less than €264, or about $363 US.
The most striking feature about the
Extreme7 is the inclusion of six memory slots, which is quite a strange appearance for a board supporting quad-channel memory, but otherwise this packs all the featuers that one would expect from a flagship product.
This includes five PCI Express x16 slots with support for 3-way SLI and CrossFireX setups, seven SATA 3Gbps ports, four SATA 6Gbps connectors, as well as the usual Power and Reset on-board buttons.
A debug LCD and an additional MOLEX power plug for multi-GPU setups are also provided together with a pair of USB 3.0 ports, 7.1-channel audio with both optical and coaxial S/PDIF out and a Clear CMOS button.
Two additional USB 3.0 ports are available through a on-board header, and the Intel X79 chipset is cooled by an aluminum heatsink topped by a small diameter fan.
While we don't know anything for sure, it's highly improbable that the X79 actually required this type of cooling, which we thought it was finally abolished a couple of years back.
Together with the X79 Extreme7,
Fudzilla also spotted in retail, the ASRock Extreme4 and Extreme4-M motherboard that are priced at €190 and €179 ($261 and $246 US), respectively.
All three of these
LGA 2011 boards are expected to start shipping to customers on November 14, when Intel will officially unveil the Sandy Bridge-E processors.
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