Following a report earlier this week, ASUS, one of the world's leading vendors of high-performance motherboards, has just announced the official introduction of its new high-end P55-based motherboard, the SABERTOOTH 55i, part of the company's newly developed 'TUF' (The Ultimate Force) series of motherboards. According to the Taiwanese manufacturer, the new series has been specifically developed to provide a choice for high-end users looking for a solid motherboard with high-end components. Furthermore, the board has been built around the company's “Marine Cool” concept, which ASUS showcased earlier this year at CeBIT.

 

Built around Intel's socket LGA1156, the new board can deliver support for the latest Core i7 and Core i5 processors, providing users with a choice for a high-performance or a mainstream platform. The SABERTOOTH 55i is designed with four DDR3 2000MHz memory DIMMs, which can accommodate a maximum of 16GB of memory. Additional features include the two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, with support for both NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technologies. There are also three PCI Express 2.0 x1 and two PCI ports, six SATA ports through Intel's P55 chipset, another two SATA ports are available through the JMicron JMB322, while another JMicron controller offers an external SATA port.

 

Among some of the unique features that have been enabled on this board, specifically designed to provide a boost of performance over similar offerings, the company highlighted the use of a unique CeraM!X microfin coating, available on the board's heatsink and designed to deliver stability under intense operating conditions. In addition, the SABERTOOTH 55i comes with a direct memory cooling solution, dubbed CoolMem!. This allows the end user to install a 40mm or a 50mm fan to blow air directly at the memory modules.

 

The SABERTOOTH 55i also boasts military-certified capacitors and MOSFETs, as well as ASUS' E.S.P. (Efficient Switching Power) technology, both of which are meant to increase stability and deliver a boost of performance for ASUS' latest P55 motherboard. Unfortunately we have no details on the board's pricing and availability at this time.