Sapphire Pure Black P67 Hydra Motherboard Available for $229

Showcased for the first time at the beginning of the year during the CES 2011 fair, the LGA 1155 Sapphire Pure Black P67 Hydra motherboard is now finally available for purchase, and Newegg is one of the first retailers in the US to carry this board which is listed at $229.99.

Sapphire's creation is one of the few Sandy Bridge motherboards that use the Lucid Hydra chip in order to allow for a mix of graphics configurations to be used with varying GPU types, brands and architectures.

Up to four such GPUs can be installed at a time, although only the first PCI Express x16 slot gets 16 PCIe lanes, the second and the third one featuring eight PCIe lanes each, while the forth slot gets only four PCI Express lanes.

In addition to these, the Pure Black P67 Hydra also packs two regular PCI slots as well as seven SATA ports and an additional eSATA connector placed on the rear I/O panel.

Four of the internal SATA ports work at 6Gbps (two are driven by the Intel P67 PCH while the other by a Marvell 88SE9128 controller), while the remaining three connectors are run by the P67 chipset at SATA 3Gbps speeds.

Other features include a 6+2+3 phase power design (CPU Core, CPU VTT and memory), on-board power and reset buttons, voltage measure points, a clear CMOS button, a diagnostic LED and a switchable dual BIOS.

Moving to the rear panel, we find that Sapphire's creation comes equipped with 10 USB ports, two are of the USB 3.0 variety, Gigabit Ethernet and FireWire ports, eight-channel audio output with S/PDIF, a PS2 keyboard/mouse combo port and integrated Bluetooth 2.1.

As noted earlier, the motherboard is available right now from NewEgg and pricing is set at $229.99. The item will ship from stock with free 2-day shipping. (via XtremeSystems)