14 DAY TRIAL // We really have to wonder if it was just a lie or a false report when Intel said it would stop making motherboards, back in January. The company certainly didn't stop announcing them, or leaking information about them, in the time since.
Case in point, the company has prepared the DZ87KLT-75K "Kinsley," a mainboard based on the Z87 chipset and equipped with the LGA 1150 socket.
That's right, the Santa Clara, California-based company has not abandoned the mainboard industry after all, at least not yet.
Instead, it has created one ready to accept the next generation of central processing units, the CPUs that will debut next week at Computex Taipei: Haswell.
What's more, Intel has even come up with a new heatsink design, steel blue with a slightly curved top.
Spec-wise, the newcomer is an ATX platform with three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/x8/x4), the same number of PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots and, surprise surprise, a legacy PCI slot.
We have no clue what that last one can possible be used for. By all accounts, the DZ87KLT-75K is a high-end product unlikely to be equipped with old hardware, or anything below a certain level really. Still, the legacy PCI is there.
Moving on, the newcomer also has (via back panel or headers) eight USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, two 800 Mbps FireWire ports, 8-channel HD audio, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth 4.0.
Gigabit Ethernet is there too, obviously (two ports), along with six SATA 6.0 Gbps connectors and an mSATA 6 Gbps port.
A Thunderbolt connector is available as well, which doubles up as a mini-DisplayPort in a pinch.
Other specs include the iVR design for Core "Haswell" processors, with an 8-phase design, five 4-pin PWM fan headers, an optional front-panel module (front panel USB 3.0), some overclocking-friendly hardware/BIOS features, and an HDMI output.
No price has been disclosed yet. Since this is just a report from eTeknix, we clearly have to wait for Intel's official presentation.