At CeBIT, ASRock already grabbed a lot of attention with its unveiling of the X79 Extreme11 motherboard. The motherboard was detailed to great lengths then. It appears like the design was still a work-in-progress, and the company has an even newer iteration. Pictured below is this latest iteration. You will notice how ASRock redid the CPU VRM. While the one shown at CeBIT packed a 16-phase VRM, this one steps it up to 24. On the obverse side of the PCB, it squeezed in chokes for all 24-phases, and compact Driver-MOSFET (DrMOS) chips for 12 (probably the other 12 are located on the reverse side of the PCB). The first iteration shown at CeBIT used LFPAK MOSFET design. A DrMOS combines up/down FETs and driver IC into a single, space-efficient package. Companies like Renesas have held interest in innovating with DrMOS chips, even compacting them further. The rest of the board is identical to the one pictured at CeBIT, except that the Creative Sound Core3D chip has the signature plastic cover over it, which can be found on Creative's Sound Core3D discrete sound cards.

ASRock released its 2011 annual financial report, the TSEC-listed company delivered earnings-per-share of NT $11.37. The report states that ASRock shipped 7.8 million motherboards in 2011, that's 13.3% short of its 9 million goal, but the company is still optimistic about meeting its even more ambitious target for 2012, that of 10 million. Currently, Europe is ASRock's biggest market, amounting to 40% of ASRock's consolidated revenues, followed by Asia-Pacific (excl. China), with 30%, and the US with 18%. China amounts to 12% of ASRock's revenues.

World's Top3 motherboard maker, ASRock Inc, presented its multidimensional products at CeBIT 2012, including a wide range of motherboard, HTPC and IPC mobo series. For AMD section, the most shining motherboard would be the A75 Pro4/MVP. This is the first AMD motherboard supporting Lucid Virtu Universal MVP technology in the world. It allows gamers to take advantage of this new technique and enjoy the amazing performance boost from HyperFormance and Virtual Vsync.

March 6th 2012. G.SKILL, the worldwide leading high performance memory designer, has showcased the extreme dual channel memory kits, DDR3 2133 MHz 32 GB (4 x 8 GB), compatible with the latest Z77 motherboards at CeBIT 2012.

Working closely with leading motherboard manufacturers, G.Skill is ready to provide PC enthusiasts the best dual channel memory for the upcoming Z77 motherboards. On the MSI Z77A-GD65 and ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboards, G.Skill has demonstrated the 32 GB super size memory kits at DDR3 2133 MHz ultra high speed with Intel Core i7 2600K processors.

"It's just a warm-up. We are working on some faster memory kits and they will be released soon. It's going to be an exciting time" said Paul Chen, senior R&D manager at G.Skill.

Apart from two of the most notable products from ASRock's booth, the X79 Extreme11 and Z77E-ITX, ASRock unveiled almost every other 7-series chipset motherboard it has in the works. The lineup is diverse, and based on every chipset model Intel will launch in the 7-series.

The Q77M-vPro is designed for commercial desktops that are part of extremely dense local network (such as corporate networks), with an established network hierarchy, and environments that demand greater manageability and data-security. The B75M is based on the Intel B75 chipset, and designed for more mainstream business desktops for small and medium enterprises.

ASRock unveiled a feature-rich mini-ITX socket LGA1155 motherboard based on Intel Z77 chipset, the Z77E-ITX. The board makes good use of its scarce PCB real-estate, with a 6-phase VRM powering the CPU, two DDR3 DIMM slots that support dual-DDR3 2800+ MHz by overclocking, one PCI-Express 3.0 x16 expansion slot, a mini PCIe 2.0 x1 slot (for wireless cards) and lots of connectivity. With storage, there are two SATA 6 Gb/s and two SATA 3 Gb/s internal ports, and one eSATA 3 Gb/s. With display, there's one each of DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. 8-channel HD audio gigabit Ethernet, six USB 3.0 ports (4 back, 2 front), make for the rest of it.

A serious player in the PC motherboard industry, the world's 3rd biggest (in terms of volumes) at that, ASRock is one brand that has accumulated the engineering potential to make anything. It's far from finished with its LGA2011 motherboard lineup, and made sure visitors at its CeBIT booth had their jaws on the floor. Enter, the ASRock X79 Extreme11. This motherboard is designed for not just extremely-overclocked PCs, but battlestations holding their own huge storage arrays. This monster is built in the EATX form-factor.

The LGA2011 socket is powered by a 16+2 phase DigiPower VRM, which draws power from two 8-pin EPS connectors. It is wired to eight DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory with speeds of over DDR3-2400 MHz by overclocking. The memory areas are powered by 4+4 phase VRM. Apart from the 24-pin ATX connector, and the two EPS connectors, the board also draws power from two 4-pin Molex connectors. The board makes use of Japanese-made solid-state capacitors almost throughout.

ASRock is working on not one, but two motherboard models based on the Intel Z77 chipset, under its Fatal1ty Professional series. The first of the lot is a standard-ATX Z77 Fatal1ty Professional, followed by the micro-ATX Z77 Fatal1ty Professional-M. The latter is ASRock's first micro-ATX Fatal1ty motherboard. The ATX Z77 Fatal1ty Professional could go on to be ASRock's flagship Z77 motherboard. The LGA1155 socket is powered by a 20+ phase digital-PWM power circuitry, and memory by a 5-phase VRM, which make this board as much an overclockers' choice as gamers'.

Expansion slots include two each of PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x8/x8 when both populated), PCIe 2.0 x1, and legacy PCI; and one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x4, wired to the PCH). There are plenty of SATA ports, including six SATA 6 Gb/s (two from the PCH, four from additional controllers), four internal SATA 3 Gb/s, and eSATA. ASRock seems to have deployed a PCIe bridge chip to yield more PCIe lanes. USB 3.0 connectivity includes two ports via front-panel header, and possibly four ports (if not more) on the rear-panel. Since users of this board will almost certainly be using discrete graphics, display connectivity is reduced to smaller ports (such as HDMI or DisplayPort).

Motherboards based on the Intel Z77 Express chipset are on course for an April 8 launch, even if you won't find compatible 3rd Generation Core processors on shelves, on that day. Here is the first picture of a finished and good-to-go ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard, which will be the company's flagship board based on the Z77 chipset, in its main product line.

The Z77 Extreme6 comes with the same black and gold styling found on the company's X79 motherboard lineup. The LGA1155 CPU socket is powered by a 12-phase DigiPower VRM. It is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory speeds with over DDR3-2800 MHz speeds by overclocking. Expansion slots include two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x8/x8 when both populated), wired to the CPU; one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x4), wired to the PCH; a PCI-Express 2.0 x1; a mini-PCIe 2.0 x1 (for wireless network cards, etc.); and two legacy PCI slots (pray why?).

The world leading motherboard brand ASRock announced today that it will be exhibiting at the CeBIT 2012 which takes place in Hannover, Germany from March 6th to 10th (Hall 17, Booth C32.) ASRock will launch a full range of the latest motherboard products and the premier home entertaining line of HTPCs, along with the exciting debut of its brand new IPC motherboard series.

ASRock will introduce an array of Intel's new 7-series motherboards, and unveil the brand new Fatal1ty X79 Professional motherboard at CeBIT 2012. Equipped with top-class components, the new ASRock/Fatal1ty X79 Professional is designed to exceed expectations of even the most dedicated gamers. Testing reveals support for up to an incredible DDR3 2624(OC) MHz, the system has very powerful OC capability and is also stable enough to completely run all the Hyper PI tests.

Lincredible phenomenon spreads around the world! Miracles did not only happen on the new basketball star Jeremy Lin, but also ASRock, the global top3 motherboard manufacturer! By updating the latest ME8 BIOS & Driver, ASRock today proudly announced their entire Intel H61 motherboard series now support Intel Rapid Start and Smart Connect Technologies! These new technologies are targeted to be supported with Intel next gen motherboard platforms, but ASRock offers an early chance to let users to experience new techniques on current H61 motherboard with 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor (Sandy Bridge).

"High-performance functions are not exclusive for high-end motherboards. ASRock's strength is to apply premium function on budget-level motherboards, making the function available by most of the users." commented James Lee, V.P. of Sales and Marketing at ASRock. "This time, miracles do happen at ASRock! Thanks to the excellent R&D team, ASRock is the first motherboard company to apply these two Intel new functions on H61 series motherboard in the world!"

Gamers need so much more from their PCs! With this concept in mind, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel worked closely with ASRock engineers to develop a well-featured motherboard based on the exciting Intel X79 chipset. Equipped with top-class components, the new ASRock/Fatal1ty X79 Professional was designed to exceed expectations of even the most dedicated gamer!

"This Fatal1ty motherboard was designed to bring your gaming performance to the highest level. The Fatal1ty X79 Professional comes with a Fatal1ty Mouse Port that delivers the precise control needed to elevate your game." said Fatal1ty. "In addition to gaming functions, the board packs 4 PCIe 3.0 slots, supporting up to 4-Way SLI and 4-Way CrossFireX. This combination will make you deadly and feared in the battlefield."

Nearly a week after unveiling its first industrial-PC (IPC) motherboards, ASRock says it is vying for ODM orders from IPC makers. When well-marketed, IPC motherboards could substantially contribute to the company's revenue, since IPC motherboards have gross margins of at least 25%, higher than that of consumer PC motherboards.

ASRock targets motherboards for use in POS (point of sale) PCs, thin clients, kiosks, panel PCs, gaming PCs, signage and devices used in surveillance, information display and retail & hospitality, the company said. So far, the company scored orders from two ODMs, with shipments set to begin in Q2, 2012. ASRock aims to obtain ODM orders from IPC vendors such as Advantech, Adlink Technology and ICP Electronics, instead of competing with them for orders for system products, ASRock said. ASRock hopes that its IPC motherboard venture will benefit it starting 2013.

World's top 3 motherboard manufacturer, ASRock Inc., specially partners with Creative Technology Ltd, the worldwide leader in digital entertainment products for the personal computer, to introduce the most trusted sound card in mobo industry - Game Blaster!

Gamers need so much more from their rigs. ASRock Game Blaster was designed to exceed the expectations of even the most dedicated gamer. It is the first sound card coming with both Creative 7.1 CH HD Sound Core3D Audio and Broadcom Gigabit LAN in the world.

ASRock has asserted that it is now a mature motherboard vendor, by releasing its first industrial PC (IPC) motherboards. IPC products are a more tell-tale sign of maturity than high-end PC or even enterprise ones, as IPC motherboards will be located on production-lines, where the slightest errors could cost the company a lot of production, or even endanger workers. ASRock released three products: the IMB-140, IMB-141, and IMB-142. The latter two share an identical board layout. All three models are driven by Intel Atom D2700.

The IMB-140 is heavy on connectivity, it includes three serial bus ports, dual-GbE interface, D-Sub, HDMI, and LVDS display outputs, two SATA 3 Gb/s storage interfaces, legacy PCI, and a plethora of other legacy connectivity. The IMB-141 and IMB-142 have slightly slimmer connectivity load outs, the two differ only with the latter having two GbE interfaces, while the former has one. The two have more USB interfaces, and one lesser serial bus (COM) port. The two also feature a mini-PCIe apart from a legacy PCI.

Japanese PC manufacturer StormST unveiled the Still Tower Gamer Edition desktop PC, which is configured to offer decent features and performance at a value price point. It's more of a "pre-integrated PC", since even its chassis is sourced from other brands. The chassis is an NZXT H2 (white or black) silent case.

Innards include Intel Core i7-2600K processor cooled by SCYTHE APSALUS2 120 closed-loop water cooler, ASRock Z68 Pro3 motherboard, 8 GB (4 GB x2) DDR3-1333 MHz memory, ELSA Gladiac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1 GB graphics, Intel SSD 320 Series 80 GB holding the OS and Program Files, 2 TB storage HDD holding Users and Documents folders, Pioneer DVD writer, Antec Earthwatts Green 650W PSU, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. All this, for 129,780 JPY or US $1,685.

At the AMD & HardOCP Game Experience event held in Texas, gamers were asked to participate in a blind test. The test involved gaming on two sets of gaming PCs with two PCs each, in each set is an AMD-powered PC, and an Intel-powered one. Participants weren't disclosed which PC was driven by what, as they were assembled in identical-looking cases (no window), with identical monitors and other peripherals. The first set is of budget single-monitor HD gaming, while the second set is high-end three-monitor gaming.

After gaming on both rigs in each set, respondents were asked to tick on a sheet of paper, which rig gave them a better gaming experience, or if gaming both had no observable difference. AMD went into this exercise expecting that most respondents will select "no difference" as their option, and so that would bring good PR to AMD, but to their surprise, most respondents selected the rigs that was powered by AMD processors.

Intel notified its partners in the PC industry that its Thunderbolt 10 Gbps interconnect will enter the PC ecosystem in April, 2012. Around that time, Intel will launch its third-generation Core processor family, and waves of new motherboards are likely to launch. It is likely that Thunderbolt will be the defining feature of many of these motherboards. Along with PC motherboards, the technology is likely to feature on pre-built desktops, and notebooks. The propagation of Thunderbolt is limited for a variety of reasons. First, its host controller costs more than $20, second, there already an established ecosystem of USB 3.0, a slower, yet competitive interconnect that maintains backwards compatibility with its older versions, and third, Intel has restricted the technology to Apple.

The cost of adoption, starting with host controllers, is expected to drop in the second half of 2012, and so the technology should standardize gradually in the future. 10 Gbps might be more than plenty of bandwidth for now, but the demand for faster device interconnects will only rise. Among the companies that have come forward with plans to adopt the technology, Sony is expected to adopt it among many of its product lines; ASUS into its high-end notebooks, and so will Gigabyte. Gigabyte will also embrace the technology for its motherboards in April, in a bid to increase competitiveness against ASUS and ASRock. Thunderbolt will be the next "features USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s" marketing label for motherboard vendors.

Although ASRock's lineup of socket LGA2011 motherboards is expansive, covering several price-points, and being available in various form-factors (ATX, XL-ATX, and Micro-ATX), all its X79 Extreme series motherboards launched so far, barring the X79 Fatal1ty Profess1onal, features the same black+silver color scheme. ASRock wants to add some color and side-branding to its X79 Extreme motherboards without necessarily investing much in coming up with new designs. Hence it came up with the idea of making Hasbro Transformers-themed motherboards.

On its Facebook page, ASRock disclosed some rough-sketches (for now, Photoshop quickies), of the X79 Optimus Prime, and the X79 Bumblebee, named after two of the most iconic Autobots from the franchise. These essentially look like the X79 Extreme9 with appropriately-colored heatsink shrouds and expansion slots. The quality of those pictures indicates that ASRock is still in the brainstorming stage of these products, seeking opinions of its Facebook fans, and it will be a while before these products take shape, if they take shape to begin with.

ASRock is aiming to reach a milestone only two other companies have managed to reach, ASUS and Gigabyte, of shipping 10 million motherboards in an year. With shipments of 1.9 million motherboards in Q4 2011, ASRock will have shipped around 7.8 million motherboards in 2011, that's 13.3% short of its goal for 2011 of shipping 9 million boards. The markets of profitable high-end motherboards have been traditionally dominated by the likes of ASUS and Gigabyte, though ASRock has managed to make inroads to this segment with some competitively-priced products in 2011, note sources.

In 2012, with a more established brand, ASRock finds that 10 million goal realistic. Next year, Intel will launch its third generation Core processor family, and with it, a new line of desktop chipset, codenamed "Panther Point", leaving motherboard makers like ASRock scope to design and launch new products. Motherboards amount to 90% of ASRock's revenues, with the remaining 10% from HTPCs, sources note.

ASRock kicked off its "Sandy Bridge-E" compatible motherboard series with one of the most complete lineups, including a micro-ATX model. It did include some oddities, such as the X79 Extreme7, with its six DIMM slot arrangement. Socket LGA2011 Core i7 processors embed a quad-channel integrated memory controller, and so it's only logical to either have one DIMM slot per channel (four DIMM slots in all), or two DIMM slots per channel (eight in all).

ASRock unveiled its latest addition to its X79 Extreme family, the X79 Extreme6/GB, which sets this oddity straight, while creating another. This model is supposed to be a notch inferior to the X79 Extreme7, yet it provides eight DIMM slots (two per channel). Other features, however, are consistent with those of the cheaper X79 Extreme4. So it's safe to call this ASRock's answer to MSI's recently-launched X79A-GD45 8D, a relatively cheaper X79 motherboard with eight DDR3 DIMM slots. 8 DIMM slots stopped being a thing of the "premium" (again, relatively), the moment Intel launched a $210 X79 motherboard that features it, the DX79TO.

Intel's Cedar Trail platform may be ignored by US PC maker Dell but it's getting quite a bit of attention from Taiwanese company ASRock who's using it for no less than three HTPC-ready motherboards, the AD2500B-ITX, AD2700B-ITX and AD2700-ITX.

As it's evident from their name, these boards have a Mini-ITX form factor and come with a 32nm Atom processor pre-installed. The AD2500B-ITX is equipped with the Atom D2500 chip (two cores @ 1.86 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache) while the AD2700B-ITX and AD2700-ITX make use of the higher-clocked D2700 (2.13 GHz). All three models have a passive cooling solution for the CPU.

Since apparently six X79 motherboards aren't enough, ASRock is now putting the finishing touches on yet another LGA 2011 model, the Fatal1ty X79 Professional. This new, gamer-oriented board supports Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processors, and features a 2oz copper PCB, Premium Gold Caps, four DDR3-2400 memory slots, ten SATA ports (six are likely 6.0 Gbps while the rest are 3.0 Gbps), and four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots enabling CrossFireX or 4-way SLI setups.

Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced a range of HyperX Genesis memory in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB kits to support the new Intel Sandy Bridge-E X79 quad-channel processors and X79 Express-based motherboards. Kingston HyperX Genesis is the perfect solution for enthusiasts who require 4x raw performance increases afforded by quad channel over single channel solutions.

For extreme users who require both the fastest memory and largest capacity, Kingston's 2400MHz and 2133MHz will soon be available in both 8 GB and 16 GB kits of four modules. Other HyperX Genesis memory for X79 systems include 1866 MHz and 1600 MHz frequencies in kits of four and eight, with capacities ranging from 8GB to 32GB. All of Kingston's HyperX kits have achieved Intel XMP certification and are compatible with the latest X79 motherboards from vendors such as ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI and ASRock.

NVIDIA today announced that system builders worldwide are now shipping the fastest PC gaming platforms ever built, thanks in part to NVIDIA SLI technology and the just-released Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors and X79 chipset-based motherboards.

The combination of NVIDIA SLI technology -- which allows for multiple GPUs to run on a single PC -- and new X79-based motherboards allow gamers to customize their PC experience with up to four NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, the world's fastest DX11 GPUs. Licensed by the world's leading motherboard manufacturers -- including Intel, ASUS, ASRock, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI, SLI technology is crucial for playing this year's hottest graphics-intensive games, such as the recently released Battlefield 3 and upcoming Batman: Arkham City with detail, resolution and immersion settings cranked up.