Wednesday, March 6th 2013
MSI Z87A Gaming Series Motherboard Prototype Pictured
MSI displayed its upcoming Z87A Gaming Series motherboard. The company is yet to begin work on cosmetic details such as PCB color, heatsinks, component color scheme, etc., but a bulk of its development is complete. To begin with, the board uses a strong 16-phase VRM to power the CPU, which draws power from two 8-pin EPS connectors. The CPU is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory; and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots in x16/NC/NC or x8/x8/NC or x8/x4/x4 configurations, depending on how they're populated. Four x1 slots make for the rest of its all-PCIe expansion slot area.
Storage connectivity on the Z87A Gaming Series includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s slots, two of which are driven by a third-party controller. 8-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, eight USB 3.0 ports (six on the rear panel, two by header), dual-HDMI and DisplayPort display outputs; effectively make for the rest of the board. The same exact PCB could be used to create two SKUs, the Z87A Gaming Series, and the Z87A-GD65. Apart from a swankier color scheme and heatsink design, the Gaming Series variant could feature a few additional overclocking features.
Source:
Lab501.ro
Storage connectivity on the Z87A Gaming Series includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s slots, two of which are driven by a third-party controller. 8-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, eight USB 3.0 ports (six on the rear panel, two by header), dual-HDMI and DisplayPort display outputs; effectively make for the rest of the board. The same exact PCB could be used to create two SKUs, the Z87A Gaming Series, and the Z87A-GD65. Apart from a swankier color scheme and heatsink design, the Gaming Series variant could feature a few additional overclocking features.
40 Comments on MSI Z87A Gaming Series Motherboard Prototype Pictured
I'm sure the gullible will be lined up to buy these with Mommy's money.
and this is prototype so, better wait for further development
and im with the other guy, my msi z77 was nothing but a headache and i will be steering around them in the future too.
Now MSI needs to make a vga of the some style and get some 80mm fans too! ;)
The 16+2+2+2 phase VRMs for this is over kill, and the ASRock Extreme11 with 24 is even more crazy. All in all, the current capability of the VRMs might be out of the park but they might have extra VRMs for better voltage regulation rather than better current ability.
I do dig the no PCI slot though, it was a goal for my rig when I was putting parts together.You would be surprised how often people get butt hurt because they don't get something that would typically be considered commonplace nowadays such as PCB color. A lot of people like their computer to look just as nice inside as it does outside and a PCB that looks like a prototype isn't going to do that very well unless that is your theme. :p
My Xonar DS starts crying...:cry: