Foxconn's newest entry to the HTPC crowd is the Cinema. Part of its Digital Life series of lifestyle products, the Foxconn Cinema is a micro-ATX motherboard based on the AMD 785G + SB710 chipset, supporting socket AM2/AM2+/AM3 processors from AMD, with support for DDR2-1066 memory. The ATI Radeon HD 4200 class integrated graphics processor (IGP) makes it capable of smooth full-HD video playback, accelerated by the IGP. The IGP is further aided by 128 MB of Sideport memory.

Video connectivity options include D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI. On the audio front, apart from the audio that Radeon HD 4200 provides over HDMI, the board's 8-channel audio CODEC supports Dolby Digital and DTS decode. Expansion slots include two PCI-E x1, and one each of PCI-E x16 and PCI. Connectivity options include gigabit Ethernet, USB, and FireWire. The Foxconn Cinema comes in two variants, Deluxe and Premium. The difference between the two is minor - a heatsink over the 5-phase CPU VRM for the Deluxe variant. While the Cinema Deluxe is priced at 11,680 JPY (US $125.5), the Cinema Premium goes for 10800 JPY (US$ 116).

Foxconn's channel brand is preparing a simple, seemingly inexpensive motherboard based on the micro-ATX form factor, the P55MX. This board seats socket LGA-1156 processors, powered by a 5-phase VRM. The socket connects to two DDR3 DIMM slots, just about enough for dual-channel memory. Among its four expansion slots are a PCI-E 2.0 x16, a close-ended PCI-E x4, and two PCI slots. All six SATA ports from the PCH are assigned as internal ports, with the rest of the connectivity building on the PCH's feature-set: 8-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, and for some reason, a serial port. Expect this to be priced very low, and perhaps in many branded OEM PCs.

Foxconn is ready with a socket LGA-1156 motherboard under its high-end Quantum Force series, a product line that includes popular models such as X58 Blood Rage for the Core i7, and X48 Black Ops for Core 2 series. This full-featured board is expected to pack a companion NVIDIA nForce 200 bridge chip alongside the Intel P55 chipset, which expands the board's PCI-Express capabilities by providing two PCI-Express x16 slots. The second x16 slot can divert 8 lanes to a third (black) PCI-Express x16 slot, giving this board 3-way SLI capability.

The CPU is powered by a 12-phase circuit. Four DDR3 DIMM slots support dual-channel DDR3 memory, while an additional NVRAM slot provides support for Intel Braidwood platform technology. Its six internal SATA II ports are wired to the P55 PCH, while additional controllers drive an IDE connector, and two eSATA ports. Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire, and 8-channel audio make for the rest of the mix. The board lacks display outputs, and hence doesn't support Intel Flexible Display Interface.

Foxconn has been in the league of companies to come up with one of the first motherboards supporting the Intel Core i7 processors. It used both its Digital Life and Quantum Force product lines to come up with performance and enthusiast-grade motherboards featuring the Intel X58 chipset. The company is coming up with a new motherboard: the X58 Renaissance II.

This board resembles the X58 Renaissance in most aspects, except for its component cooling, where it uses individual heatsinks over the chipset and VRM areas. Less fancy heatsinks are in place. The new board also does away with the SAS support. The rest of the product's feature-set stays identical to that of the X58 Renaissance. The company is expected to announce the motherboard soon, at an expectedly lesser price than that of its predecessor. For reference, the third picture below is that of the original X58 Renaissance.

Pictured last month as merely a low-end variant of the Blood Rage X58 series (read here), Foxconn Flaming Blade X58 has emerged as a product series in itself, with two sub-variants: Flaming Blade X58 and Flaming Blade X58 GTI. The former being the base-model, while the latter is a scaled-down, even cheaper one.

Both motherboards feature an identical feature set for the most part: Three DDR3-1800 DIMM slots, two PCI-E x16 slots, near-identical board layouts, etc. The differences start with the GTI variant featuring simpler component cooling, with individual heatsinks over the chipset and VRM areas. The base-model has a heat-pipe based cooler. Another set of differences are present with the boards' back-panel and the connectors on offer: the GTI variant lacks two eSATA connectors and an Ethernet controller (although the picture suggests otherwise). Both models will cater to the $200 market price-point.

Over the course of the last year, Foxconn's channel division emerged as a mature, seasoned and determined player in the high-end PC motherboard industry. For Intel's new Core i7 platform, Foxconn started off with an enthusiast-grade motherboard called the X58 Blood Rage, and a premium X58 Renaissance model. Over time, the X58 Blood Rage became a series of motherboards based on the scaling-down of its feature-set. The first variant to emerge out of it was the Blood Rage GTI, and now a newer "value" offering: the Blood Rage Flaming Blade.

Pictured by Japanese AKIBA PC Hotline, the Flaming Blade shows a distinct scaling-down of Blood Rage's feature-set, beyond that of the GTI variant, with a remodeled PCB, rearranged components and colour-theme. To begin with the CPU is powered by standard ferrite-core chokes as against the PWM circuitry on the original Blood Rage, and the semi-digital circuitry on the GTI variant. A standard 6-phase circuit is employed. The board continues having three DDR3 DIMM slots. Memory is powered by a two-phase circuit. Instead of four PCI-Express x16 connectors on the other variants, Flaming Blade makes do with only two, with a PCI-E x4 slot added to the mix. There is a notable amount of changes with the placement of connectors and headers. The board reduces the use of red in colour-coding the connectors and slots. The SONAR X-Fi sound card gets replaced by onboard audio, while the rest of the back-panel remains the same in terms of connectors. According to the source, Foxconn is looking to target the US $200~$220 price range with the Flaming Blade. For reference, the third picture below is that of the original Blood Rage.

Famed for creating one of the most well-presented Core i7-supportive motherboards with the original BloodRage X58, Foxconn is preparing a new variant of the said motherboard: the BloodRage X58 GTI. This variant is identical to the original design, for the most of the part. It even provides a near-identical feature-set and bundled accessories, except for a few minor changes: the digital PWM-based CPU power circuit has been replaced with a 14-phase hybrid PWM. In simpler terms, the CPU power circuit will consist of a portion of digital PWM circuitry, plus a portion consisting of standard chokes. From the picture (below) one can see the dark heatsink right above the CPU socket and chokes next to it. Apart from that, the standard feature set remains: support for ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU technologies, up to 12 GB of DDR3 memory (3 DIMM slots in all), an expansive set of overclocker-friendly features such as Force-Reset, that restores the last known working BIOS state, and finally the SONAR X-Fi sound card. The BloodRage X58 GTI is expected to hit stores soon. A lot more is yet to be known about this SKU before predicting its price.

Well guys, you may be wondering what is happening with DDR3 reviews at Techpowerup. Especially with that juicy Core i7 and Tri-Channel memory kits popping up at insane speeds all over the internet. Well: fear not! We will have you covered in the near future. Thanks to the guys at Foxconn and Noctua we now have the basis for some of those reviews you have come to (hopefully) love. The choice of a CPU has not yet been made, but expect to see a reviews based on this rig in the new year! And now time for some pictures of this crazy board:

Blood RAGE, the latest member of Foxconn's Quantum Force family with Intel X58 chipset, sets the highest record of DDR3 memory overclocking with Intel Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz armed by a Taiwan overclocker.

With a score of 2513.8MHz (1256.9*2) the test has produced one of the highest OC scores of all time, i.e., a new world record using A-DATA DDR3 800 Memory.

Despite all the rumors that FOXCONN is not doing so well and it is probably going out of the business, Foxconn Electronics and company subsidiary Foxconn Technology posted today record October sales.

Despite a weakening global economy, Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) and company subsidiary Foxconn Technology reported October sales that beat market expectations and hit respective company records. Foxconn Electronics spokesperson Edmund Ding said networking and consumer electronics products delivered an outstanding performance in October, while PC product lines also showed stable growth, pushing the company's October sales up 7.63% from September to NT$169.38 billion (US$5.2 billion), an increase of 29.13% on year. Accumulated sales from January to October were NT$1.216 trillion, up 27.47% compared to the same period last year and slightly lower than the company's 30% annual growth target. The company's sales in November and December are expected to continue to grow, though 30% monthly growth will be a difficult goal for the company to achieve, indicated the market watchers.
Foxconn Electronics' subsidiary Foxconn Technology also announced October consolidated sales of NT$16.72 billion, up 13.12% on month and 25.9% on year. Accumulated sales from January to October were NT$127.87 billion, representing 18.56% growth from the same period of 2007.

I guess now all rumors of FOXCONN leaving the motherboard market are groundless.

Foxconn marks its enthusiast and gamer grade motherboards under the Quantum-Force banner. These motherboards are targeted towards overclockers and gamers. Having made a motherboard based on the Nehalem-supportive Blood Rage, the company hasn't made a stop. They've come up with a new motherboard based on the Intel P45 chipset, known as 'Avenger'.

Foxconn claims to have made several changes to the basic design of a motherboard, by pushing the northbridge closer to the DDR2 memory slots (reportedly to cut latencies), and the inclusion of a supplementary PCI-Express switch, to provide dual PCI-Express x16 connections for ATI Crossfire: something not possible with P45 motherboards. The switch chip is made by PLX, and is similar to the one used by AMD on its flagship Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card.

Quantum Force is the series of motherboards by Foxconn aimed at serious overclockers, enthusiasts, and gamers alike. Blood Rage is the name of the motherboard Foxconn plans to release, that's based on Intel's newest X58 Express chipset, supporting the upcoming Core i7 processors from Intel.

This motherboard first came to light last week, when a few quick low-resolution snaps were passed on to the internet (covered here). VR-Zone now put up high resolution images, that reveal a lot more about this motherboard. Full-resolution versions of the first picture can be viewed here, and that of the second picture here.

Foxconn has definitely taken serious steps to claim its place in the race for market supremacy with premium motherboards these days. Their high-end motherboard range is diversified into the Digital Life series for the premium all-rounder motherboards, and Quantum-Force for enthusiast and gamer-grade boards. Foxconn's addition to the Quantum-Force series based on the new Nehalem-supportive X58 chipset, is the Blood Rage.

To quickly run you through the features, it is an enthusiast board for overclockers and gamers alike. It only features three DDR3 DIMM slots, while featuring four PCI-Express x16 slots, supporting both ATI CrossfireX and NVIDIA SLI. It supports DDR3 1800 memory (OC), and a 14 phase hybrid CPU power circuit featuring DirectFET MOSFET technology. The board features a 4-in-1 chipset cooler technology, which can serve purposes of a air-cooling (DIY), water-cooling, and cavity for liquid-nitrogen cooling, much like the Black Ops motherboard. Sound is modularised, with a bundled Foxconn SONAR X-Fi sound card. The board supports SAS storage. What a drool!

Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors (codenamed Nehalem) will use the new X58 chipset and the ICH10-R Soutbhridge. DRR3 memory can be installed in six slots running DDR3-800, 1066 and 1333.

The board we took photos of is a protoype that's why you can see manual soldering and cabling on it.

The crew over at Tom's Hardware is taking an exclusive look at a fully assembled Nehalem system that consists of a FOXCONN X58 motherboard and a Nehalem CPU. Details on the platform and the new architecture are already well detailed so I'll skip them. It's the motherboard that's cool and worth looking. That's FOXCONN's reference board powered by Intel's X58 chipset and ICH10-R southbridge, the same used on today's Intel P45 platforms. ICH-10 supplies up to four PCI Express x16 paths, of which two, are PCI Express 2.0. FOXCONN's Renaissance board also allows up to 24GB of DDR3 memory to be installed on 6 slots. With Nehalem, the memory is running in triple-channel mode (the name is pretty self explanatory). Initially the motherboard will support DDR3-800, 1066 and 1333 configurations. The Renaissance also has six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, Realtek ALC888S 7.1 channel audio and a Gigabit Ethernet. Speaking to the other motherboard features, they include the usual heatpipe cooling for the chipset, solid ultra-low SR capacitors, debugging LED lights, clear CMOS button round the backplate and a six-phase power circuit design. Expect benchmarks and price information when the official launch date of Nehalem approaches.

Intel Nehalem Posts Impressive CPU Scores with 3D Benchmarks

The rather lucky Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware got their hands on an Intel Bloomfield engineering sample that has a clock-speed of 2.93 GHz, running on a Intel X58 chipset based motherboard made by Foxconn called Renaissance to evaluate a Gainward Radeon HD4850 sample. System details are provided below.

The Denube Gaming Machine Concept is basically four computers in one case, powered by a single power supply.

Motherboard maker Foxconn broke all records by launching yet another high-end motherboard this week, the Dreadnought. First previewed at CeBIT 2008, the 3rd Intel platform motherboard in the Quantum Force series is based on the enthusiast-class nForce 790i Ultra SLI MCP and supports the latest Intel Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo/Quad processors up to FSB 1600MHz. "The Quantum Force range of motherboards is now expanding as we bring a wider range of solutions to the market for enthusiasts. Dreadnought allows enthusiasts to couple powerful Intel processors with NVIDIA SLI-enabled graphics cards" commented Greta Kuo, Quantum Force Product Manager. Dreadnought certainly packs significant firepower, with support for the very latest DDR3-2000 memory, 8 phase Digital PWM and 3x PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots that support NVIDIA's 3-way SLI technology. With the Dreadnought board, Foxconn is also introducing their brand new 4-in-1 motherboard cooling. The 4-in-1 Quantum Cooler is an all-copper NB-SB-VRM heatpipe solution that can be quickly adapted for passive or active air cooling, water cooling or even extreme LN2 or dry ice cooling. The Dreadnought motherboard will be available in retail channels this month, priced at around US $399. For further information about Quantum Force and the Dreadnought motherboard, click here.

Foxconn this week released two new motherboards targeted at people who use AMD processors. I'll leave only a link to the system specs for the first one, the A79A-S. Being tagged as a "Digital Life" motherboard it's not in our best interest. The second one - FOXCONN Quantum Force Destroyer is another story. Based on the NVIDIA 780a SLI MCP that supports the latest AMD Phenom/Athlon/Sempron processors and HyperTransport 3.0 technology it represents the first Quantum Force solution for the AMD platform. As such it comes with a total of four PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots providing up to 3-way SLI support or even 4-way graphics (no SLI). In addition, just like every other Quantum product, the Force Destroyer comes with Foxconn's proprietary Quantum BIOS, custom heatpipe cooling solution, Quantum Lap motherboard tray for convenient workbench installation, and the Quantum Flow kit which improves airflow when two or more graphics cards are installed. You can find a complete rundown on this features as well as the full motherboard specs within the official press release here.

Almost a month ahead of the Intel P45 release, Foxconn has showed the Quantum Force "Avenger" motherboard based on the Intel P45 chipset that is complete and ready to please many overclockers. The overall looks of the board is not quite what you've expected it to look like. The P45 northbridge is now between the CPU and memory area, and there're plenty of red DIP switches, dual BIOS chips, 8-Phase Digital PWM and 2-Phase PWM for memory power regulation and Dual PCI-E x16 Gen. 2.0 slots that make this motherboard one of a kind. There're even measurement points above the memory slots for convenient and accurate voltage reading in case you're using multimeter. The northbridge heatpipe cooling can also be used for mounting a fan that will cool both the chipset and the memory slots. Be sure to check up on this link here for more information and pictures.

FOXCONN today officially launched the long awaited second BLACKOPS motherboard in the Quantum Force series. Based on the Intel X48 chipset and packed with many unique features for extreme overclocking, BLACKOPS comes out of the box with 4 different chipset cooling options: regular air cooling, water cooling and even LN2 or dry ice. BLACKOPS has been optimized for Intel Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo processors up to 1600MHz FSB, and supports a maximum of 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600/1333/1066/800MHz memory. With 3x PCIe x16 2.0 slots (2x x16, 1x x4 bandwidth), and CrossFireX support, it also features 8 phase digital PWM, and a new SONAR daughter card based on the Realtek ALC885 8 channel audio chip. The BLACKOPS motherboard will be available in retail channels this month, priced at around US $400. For further information check out this page.

Foxconn continues to impress with yet another high-end Quantum Force motherboard. Again only for Intel processors, the NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI powered board offers full 3-way SLI and Intel 45nm CPUs support, as well as built-in northbridge water cooling. This Dreadnought version supports up to 8GB of DDR3 only memory. The two removable BIOS chips, the post LED indicator and the 8-phase power are only a few of the great things presented in this mobo.

Foxconn "ELA" P45 will be typical representative of a high-end Intel motherboard powered by Intel's P45 performance chipset paired with the ICH10R south bridge. As seen in the pictures and board specs, the "ELA" P45 will support the latest 45nm Intel Core 2 processors with FSB up to 1333MHz, up to 8GB of 1066MHz DDR2 memory and three PCI-e 2.0 16x graphics slots. The board's design and color scheme does not differ much from other Foxconn products. The remaining part of the lies beneath.

Foxconn is going to display their Quantum Force "Destroyer" Hybrid SLI board based on the MCP72 chipset over at the upcoming CeBIT. MCP72XE supports AMD AM2/AM2+ processors, PCI-E 2.0, HT 3.0, Hybrid SLI technology, a total of 19 PCI--E lanes and another 32 lanes from nForce 200 PCIe switch chip, SATA 3.0 Gbit/s and 12x USB 2.0 ports. Expect more after CeBIT starts on March 4th.

FOXCONN today announced the A78AX family of discrete motherboards based on the AMD 770 chipset with SB700 southbridge - providing a low-cost, low-power solution for the latest AMD processors. As the first motherboard manufacturer to use the SB700 southbridge across its entire AMD 7-Series chipset range, the A78AX has been configured to provide 6 SATAII connectors with RAID functionality, up to 10 USB2.0 ports, HyperTransport 3.0 technology and full support for AM2+ Phenom processors and socket AM2 Athlon and Sempron models.