14 DAY TRIAL // Like most other motherboard manufacturers, Biostart is also preparing for the launch of the Intel Z68 chipset and one of the company's LGA 1155 solutions built on the upcoming PCH has just been leaked with almost a week ahead of launch.
The motherboard in question is called the TZ68A+ and, judging by its rather limited feature set, targets users who want a Z68 board that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
As a result, the TZ68A+ comes with what appears to be a 4+1 phase power design as well as with just three fan headers and only one of these is PWM controlled.
Other features include two PCI Express x16 slots, one PCI-E x1 and a pair of regular PCI slots and six SATA ports.
Two of these support SATA 6Gbps transfer speeds, but sadly none of the ports were angled at 90-degrees to reduce cable clutter when multiple storage drives are used.
Furthermore, only the first of the two PCI Express slots can work at x16 speeds as the second one has only four PCI-E lanes routed to it. This makes the TZ68A+ incompatible with dual-GPU setups.
On a plus side, Biostar has managed to put together a very nice looking board with a more than decent layout, which doesn't block any PCI slots when dual-slot graphics cards are installed, and the TZ68A+ also features on-board power and reset buttons.
Moving to the back, the connectivity options available are rather scarce, but the motherboard does feature three video outputs, including HDMI, dual-link DVI and VGA.
Biostar has also added support for two USB 3.0 ports that are driven by a third-party ASMedia host controller.
No details regarding pricing are available at this time, but the Biostar TZ68A+ is expected to arrive on May 11, when Intel makes official the Z68 Express PCH. (via VR-Zone)