14 DAY TRIAL // With less than a week to go until the Z68 Express chipset becomes official, the Web is already full of pictures of motherboards built using this upcoming PCH and the latest such model to be detailed is the MSI Z68MA-ED55.
This is only the second micro-ATX Z68 board to make its appearance until now, after the ASRock Z68 Pro3-M that was introduced a short while ago.
Compared to ASRock's solution, however, the Z68MA-ED55 seems to target a more pretentious crowd as it packs some high-end features that are reserved usually for more expensive motherboards.
I am talking here about the voltages readout points as well as about the 10-phase PWM design that is even using tantalum capacitors.
In addition, MSI has equipped the Z68MA-ED55 with on-board Power and Reset buttons, and right beneath the voltage header there's also an OC Genie button.
As far as the expansion possibilities are concerned, the Z68MA-ED55 packs no less than two PCI Express x16 slots, two PCI-E x1 slots as well as four SATA 3Gbps and two SATA 6Gbps ports.
These are driven by the Z68 Express chipset and also support the Smart Response SSD caching technology developed by Intel.
Moving to the back of the motherboard, we get to see that MSI has added all the usual connectivity options that come standard nowadays, including a pair of USB 3.0 ports 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out and a FireWire port.
The Taiwanese company has also introduced a wide series of video outputs, including D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI, which make the board compatible with Intel's Quick Sync video transcoding technology. The only thing that is missing is the addition of an on-board USB 3.0 header.
No details regarding pricing are available at this time, but the MSI Z68MA-ED55 is expected to become official on May 11, when Intel plans to introduce the Z68 Express chipset. (via VR-Zone)
