14 DAY TRIAL // Together with all the other major motherboard makers, ASRock has also showcased, at this year's Computex, an X79 Express-based board that is compatible with Intel's upcoming LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors.
The motherboard goes by the name of the X79 Extreme4 and it features a similar design to that of the Asus and Gigabyte solutions we detailed earlier.
However, unlike these two models, ASRock went with an 8-phase PWM which is placed right between the four DDR3 memory slots.
In the final version of the board, the VRM will be cooled by an aluminum heatsink, as it will also be the case with the X79 PCH, but the Taiwanese company hasn't yet finalized the design of its board.
Outside of the four DIMM sockets, the X79 Extreme4 packs three PCI Express x16 slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and a pair of 32-bit legacy PCI slots. The board is compatible with both 2-way and 3-way CrossFireX and SLI setups (x16/x16 or x16/x8/x8).
When multiple graphics cards are being used, additional power can be provided through a MOLEX plug that is situated right near the first PCI Express x16 slot.
As far as storage is concerned, ASRock has equipped the board with no less than eight SAS 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps ports.
One additional SATA 6Gbps port is located to the right of the angled storage connectors, near the USB 3.0 pin header.
The rest of the feature list includes 8-channel HD audio, dual Gigabit Ethernet, DDR3-2133 memory support, on-board Power and Reset buttons and a BIOS debug LCD.
Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processors are expected to debut in the forth quarter of 2011 and the initial CPU batch will include three chips, two featuring a six-core design and a quad-core model. The ASRock X79 Extreme4 is also expected to arrive in Q4 2011. (via VR-Zone)
