14 DAY TRIAL // Although the first Intel Z68 motherboards are slated to be launched in the second quarter of 2011, lately, such solutions have started to make their appearance over the Web, after Mitac, MSI being the second company to show off a Z68 board.
Judging from the pictures provided by the zol.com.cn website, this yet unnamed motherboard will come in the micro-ATX form factor, similarly to most H67-based solutions.
However, unlike the H67 models, the board features dual PCI Express x16 and four DDR3 memory slots as well as six SATA ports, two of them working at 6Gbps.
In addition, the mobo will also carry an OC Genie button, at least dual USB 3.0 rear ports, HDMI and D-SUB video outputs as well as an Ethernet port.
Other details are hard to be distinguished form the blurry pictures provided, but it seems like MSI also included a V-check voltage monitoring bracket as well as some hefty VRM heatsinks, joined together via a heatpipe.
Made official just recently, the Z68 chipset comes as a hybrid between the P67 and the H67 and was designed in order to allow for overclocking Sandy Bridge CPUs while using the integrated graphics.
Presently, this feat isn't supported by the P67 or H67 as the first one lacks the flexible display interface (FDI) that is required in order to use the on-die GPU while the latter doesn't allow for CPU multiplier adjustment.
In addition, Z68 enables motherboard makers to split the 16 PCI Express lanes available in two x8 PCIe slots, a feat that wasn't possible on the H67.
This will further improve the system's performance when dual-GPU setups are being used.
Sadly, no details are provided regarding the release date of this new motherboard, but I expect it to arrive together with a bunch of other Z68-based boards in the second quarter of 2011.
