Sapphire Also Showcases Pure Black 990FX Motherboard

AMD's 990FX chipset proved to be one of the stars of this year's Computex, and Sapphire couldn't pass this opportunity to introduce their own motherboard based on this controller, the Pure Black 990FX-N.

The motherboard features the same black PCB that is characteristic to all its high-end motherboards and is targeting enthusiast users who are considering buying an AMD Bulldozer rig.

As a result, the board features no less than five PCI Express x16 slots, which can support up to four graphics cards, as well as two rear-ended PCI-E x4 slots.

Despite the high number of PCI-E slots available, enthusiasts will be limited at running only CrossFireX configurations on the Pure Black 990FX-N, since Sapphire lacks a license for SLI (Nvidia grants them only to manufacturers that already have a license for Intel platforms).

As far as storage options are concerned, Sapphire has installed no less than eight internal SATA 6Gbps ports on the Pure Black 990FX-N, six of them driven by the SB950 south bridge, as well as two eSATA connectors.

Also on the rear I/O panel, users will find a pair of USB 3.0 ports, dual Gigabit LAN ports, no less than eight USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 mouse/keyboard port as well as 7.1-channel audio with digital and coaxial S/PDIF outputs.

Two other USB 3.0 ports are available through a pin header that is placed right near the SATA connectors and is angled at 90 degrees.

As is usually the case with high-end motherboards, the Pure Black 990FX-N features on-board Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons as well as a BIOS debug LCD.

Power is provided by a 10-phase VRM which supports all of AMD's upcoming Bulldozer processors.

Sapphire hasn't made any information regarding price or availability of the Pure Black 990FX-N public, but the motherboard is expected to reach stores by the end of the month. (via TechPowerUp)