Supermicro Dips its Toes in DIY Motherboard Market, Unveils C7Z87-OCE

[btarunr]

Known more for its server and workstation motherboards; and rackmount server chassis; Supermicro dipped its toes into consumer (DIY) motherboards, announcing the C7Z87-OCE, a socket LGA1150 motherboard based on the Intel Z87 Express chipset. Built in the standard ATX form-factor, this board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, and 8-pin EPS connectors. It features a rather bland blue PCB, with seemingly basic heatsinks over the chipset and CPU VRM. In reality, the 22 nm-built Z87 Express PCH, with a 4.1W TDP can make do with a heatsink like that. The one on the VRM, on the other hand, is suspect. It appears to use a 6-phase digital PWM circuitry with driver-MOSFETs.

The LGA1150 socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/NC, x8/x8/NC, x8/x4/x4). A trio of close-ended PCI-Express 2.0 x4 find room in between them. The board offers a total of eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, six from the Z87 PCH, two from a third-party controller. Also on offer, are eight USB 3.0 ports, four on the rear panel, four by headers. The board offers 8-channel HD audio with optical SPDIF output, a pair of gigabit Ethernet interfaces, Thunderbolt (which doubles up as mini-DisplayPort), dual-link DVI and D-Sub display outputs. Although driven by AMI Aptio UEFI BIOS, it features a classic keyboard-driven setup program UI. The company didn't release pricing. Find a complete review at the source.



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[HumanSmoke]

Nice to see them make the front pages again. Still have fond memories of the H8DC8 - a solid piece of kit.

 

[freaksavior]

Nice to see them make the front pages again. Still have fond memories of the H8DC8 - a solid piece of kit.

Their boards are not that great on the server platform. They constantly have NIC issues and IPMI issues.

 

[Jack1n]

I likes this board,very straight forward-no non-sense,i also like the PCI layout.

 

[Madn3ss795]

This board looks freakin' crowed. Too bad it lacks a legacy PCI port.

 

[Jorge]

I hope that Supermicro continues to offer consumer level mobos including dual socket AMD models. They will force Asus and others to start offering quality mobos or lose sales.

 

[Frick]

I hope that Supermicro continues to offer consumer level mobos including dual socket AMD models. They will force Asus and others to start offering quality mobos or lose sales.

Dual AM3+ with good OC potential! Or dual 1150.

 

[xvi]

Lack of legacy PCI (to me) conflicts with the inclusion of a VGA port. I mean, I guess the wiring is there so why not, but..

 

[Deadlyraver]

Supermicro knows their s**t when it comes to motherboards. This motherboard will be quite a nice home for my peripherals if I reconsider the Haswell project I've been thinking about.

 

[stinger608]

really, another frigging blue motherboard!

 

[HumanSmoke]

I hope that Supermicro continues to offer consumer level mobos including dual socket AMD models.

When was the last time C32 and G34 (AMD dual socket) and Opteron were considered "consumer level"?

Dual AM3+ with good OC potential! Or dual 1150.

Neither ?
All LGA 1150 CPUs are uniprocessor design.

 

[shovenose]

Their boards are not that great on the server platform. They constantly have NIC issues and IPMI issues.

I will disagree with you on that. All of my Supermicro stuff over the years has been solid.

 

[micropage7]

really, another frigging blue motherboard!

yeah somehow reminds me of gigabyte but its sooo crowded

 

[scorpion_amd13]

The VRM heatsink could turn out to be surprisingly sufficient. The parts they're using for the VRM aren't necessarily from the "boil an egg" category. I remember the reference design VRM for the Radeon HD 6950, which used the same kind of parts that this board's CPU VRM uses. That thing wouldn't even reach 50 Celsius even after I BIOS-modded to board into a Radeon HD 6970 and overclocked it. Best VRM ever designed, and it used a far inferior cooling system.

 

[Wile E]

Good thing I don't care about color. It can be the generic green or gold PCB color, so long as it performs well.