In what's a clear sign of enterprise motherboard manufacturers like Supermicro and TYAN taking an interest in the DIY client-desktop market, Taiwanese company Supermicro launched the C7Z97-M, a micro-ATX, socket LGA1150 motherboard, based on Intel's Z97 Express chipset. It may not be the first motherboard based on the chipset by a traditionally enterprise-hardware company, but it's certainly the first designed to woo the PC enthusiast crowd. The features a matte-black PCB, with matte-black and ruby-red scheme, which bear a strong resemblance to Foxconn, and its Blood-Rage series.

The C7Z97-M features a 6-layer PCB, a digital-PWM CPU power delivery, with ceramic multi-phase bar chokes, and driver-MOSFETs. The board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS. You can tell it's a board made by an enterprise manufacturer, looking at components such as the ASpeed IPMI 2.0 remote management chip, an LVDS display output, a TPM header, and key toggles being left to manual jumpers. The BIOS setup program is a reference AMI Aptio (not skinned).Expansion slots include one PCI-Express 3.0 x16, a close-ended PCI-Express 3.0 x8 that takes its lanes from the x16 slot, and a close-ended PCI-Express 2.0 x4, which is wired to the Z97 PCH. Storage connectivity includes just the six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, there's no M.2 or SATA-Express. Display outputs include D-Sub, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Network is care of an enterprise grade Intel i210-AT GbE controller. 8-channel HD audio (Realtek ALC1150), six USB 3.0 ports, and several USB 2.0/1.1 ports make for the rest of its modern connectivity. There's also some legacy connectivity, such as PS/2 combo, and RS232 COM by header. Supermicro didn't announce pricing or availability.