ASUS' dual-LGA2011 workstation motherboard, the Z9PE-D8-WS, has been listed by Canadian retailer NCIX for pre-order. It is priced at CA $632.98 (US $634.56). The store page does not go on to mention availability, except that orders will be shipped whenever there are inventories. Given its pre-order listing, we expect the product-launch of the Z9PE-D8-WS not to be too far, considering Intel's launch of a large number of "Sandy Bridge-EP" Xeon processors is just around the corner (within Q1, 2012). The Z9PE-D8-WS is designed to support 2P configurations based on Xeon "Sandy Bridge-EP" processors. The motherboard is further detailed here. To PC enthusiasts, it presents a potential alternative to EVGA's SR-X.Image Courtesy: VR-Zone

Intel's most affordable processor in the LGA2011 package, the Core i7-3820, surfaced on Japanese stores in the Akihabara electronics shopping district of Tokyo. It is priced around 25,000 JPY (US $322). The retail box of this chip, carrying the S-Spec code "SR0LD", appears to be as big as those of the Core i7-3930K and Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition, its shape indicates that it lacks a bundled cooling solution, and so users should still rely on compatible third-party coolers, or use Intel's RTS2011LC, purchased separately.

The Core i7-3820 is a quad-core part carved out of the Sandy Bridge-E silicon. It has four cores, and eight logical CPUs enabled with HyperThreading Technology. The chip is clocked at 3.60 GHz. Caches include 256 KB L2 per core, and 10 MB shared L3. The chip retains the quad-channel DDR3 IMC present on the more expensive six-core parts. It is also said to be "limited unlocked", meaning it allows multiplier-assisted overclocking to a certain limit. The Core i7-3820 is not officially launched, though it should be unofficially supported by most socket LGA2011 motherboards based on the X79 chipset.

Among the sea of tower-type CPU coolers which are the same old tripe packaged and colored differently, few companies are actually investing in innovation, one of them is Prolimatech. The company is working on two new yet-unnamed CPU coolers specifically designed for socket LGA2011 motherboards, one has already taken shape, the other is still in its CGI form.

The first one (first two images below), appears to be an leaner, fitter evolution of the Prolimatech Genesis. While the Genesis uses a dual-independent fin-stack design in which one stack propagates perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard while the other propagates parallel to the plane, on this new design, both stacks propagate parallel to the plane, in opposite directions, and both being dissimilar in size.

Titan Technology unveiled its latest Siberia CPU Cooler, the TTC-NC55TZ(RB). The cooler has an asymmetric aluminum fin tower design, which cools other hot components on the motherboard along with the CPU. The design consists of a nickel-plated copper base, from which five copper heat pipes pass. One end of these heat pipes pass through an aluminum fin stack that propagates along the plane of the motherboard, while the other passes though a stack that propagates perpendicular to this plane.

The stack that's along the plane of the motherboard is the larger of the two, and is ventilated by a 140 mm fan. The perpendicular stack is ventilated by a smaller 120 mm fan. The 140 mm fan spins at 700 ~ 1,800 RPM, pushing 34.78 ~ 89.43 CFM of air, with a noise output of 8.3 ~ 28.8 dBA. The 120 mm fan, on the other hand, spins at 800 ~ 2,200 RPM; pushing 24.23 ~ 66.2 CFM, with 15.0 ~ 35.0 dBA noise output. Both fans have 4-pin plugs and support PWM control. The heatsink itself measures 200 x 130 x 162 mm (WxDxH), weighing 755 g. All current sockets, including LGA2011, LGA1366, LGA1155/LGA1156, AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2, and FM1 are supported. It is priced at 6,980 JPY (US $91.6).

Antec announced today that it is giving away free socket LGA2011 brackets for existing owners of its Kuhler H2O 920 and Kuhler H2O 620 closed-loop CPU water coolers. The two were released before Intel launched its new socket, and so there are large stocks in the market that lack LGA2011 brackets. To avail this offer, existing owners have to write to Kuhler.eu@antec.com with a proof of purchase of their product, and shipping address. Antec also announced that it has started bundling the LGA2011 bracket with all fresh batches of Kuhler H2O 920 and Kuhler H2O 620, which will start shipping from its factories in February.

AMD might be a little sore that its "Zambezi" FX processor family based on its much-hyped "Bulldozer" architecture didn't quite meet the performance expectations of a ground-up new CPU architecture, but it doesn't want to take chances and build hype around the architecture that succeeds it. From various sources, some faintly-reliable, we have been hearing that the next-generation of high-performance desktop processors based on "Piledriver" architecture, codenamed "Vishera", will pack five modules or 10 cores, and will be structured essentially like Zambezi, since Piledriver is basically a refinement of Bulldozer architecture. The latest leak comes from the Software Optimization Guide for AMD 15h family (read here), which was picked up by CPU World while most of us were busy with CES.

CPU World compiled most of the features of what it suspected to be AMD referring to its future processors based on the Piledriver architecture, that's "Vishera" (desktop high-performance), "Terramar" (high-density server), and "Sepang" (small-medium business server) parts. The three are not the first chips to be based on Piledriver, AMD has a new mainstream desktop and notebook APU in the works codenamed "Trinity", which is en route for a little later this year. Trinity basically has an identical CPUID instruction-set as Vishera, Terramar, and Sepang, confirming their common lineage compared to today's "Bulldozer" architecture. The most catchy detail is of Vishera featuring 4 DDR3 channels.

Zalman released ZM-OC2011, a retention kit upgrade for WB5 and WB5 Plus water-blocks to support Intel's latest LGA2011 socket, on which Intel's "Sandy Bridge-E" Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme Edition processors are based. The kit consists of brackets that let you use the mount-hole spacing of all previous Intel LGA sockets, including LGA775, LGA1366, LGA1155/1156; nuts and bolts. In Japan it is priced at around $19.

After trying to avoid UEFI BIOS by sticking to "HybridEFI" workarounds to its existing AwardBIOS code on most of its socket LGA1155 and AM3+ motherboards, GIGABYTE reluctantly transitioned to UEFI with its socket LGA2011 motherboards, on which it fused its innovative Dual-BIOS technology with UEFI to come up with Dual-UEFI technology. One can imagine this to be particularly tough to implement on lower-end models, since UEFI with graphical setup program requires higher-capacity EEPROM chips, and since Dual-UEFI would need two, it would stress component costs, but GIGABYTE did it anyway.

In Japan, the company released the latest revision of the GA-H61MA-D3V (rev. 2.0), an entry-level socket LGA1155 motherboard based on the Intel H61 chipset, which features Dual-UEFI. Apart from this, the board also features GIGABYTE's Ultra-Durable 4 Classic component loadout, which consists of a new fiberglass fabric weave PCB that's more resistant to humidity that causes short-circuits, high ESD-resistance ICs, anti-surge ICs located on critical circuits, low RDS (on) MOSFETs, and a 100% high-grade solid-state capacitor design.

Intel's X79 chipset for Sandy Bridge-E platform was originally designed to have four SAS (serial-attached SCSI) channels apart from its usual loadout of SATA ports. Early prototypes of socket LGA2011 motherboards displayed at last year's Computex event (June), carried a large number of chipset-driven ports. However, Intel found the chipset-integrated SAS RAID controller (independent device from the SATA RAID controller) to have "unreliable performance", and hence changed its specification at the last moment. So the production specification of X79 ended up having the same SATA port loadout as P67 (two SATA 6 Gb/s + four SATA 3 Gb/s).

This specifications change did not result in a design change of the X79 PCH package, its die remained the same, so did its package and pin-map, which motherboard vendors had for nearly an year. So ECS decided to implement the SAS ports despite being out of specifications. LegitReviews discovered that its X79R-AX sample very much did have SAS ports wired to the PCH. With firmware of the SAS RAID controller and drivers, it could enable and use those ports. Although the SAS ports are physically present on the board, users have to enable them via the UEFI firmware setup program (BIOS).

Like with the Frio Snow Edition, Thermaltake's higher-end CPU air cooler, the Frio OCK, also has a Snow Edition variant. As a variant, its specifications are otherwise identical to the original, except that the black+red colored plastic parts (such as shrouds, fan frames, and impellers), are replaced with white+blue colored ones. The blue, of course, is an "icy" shade of it. The top shroud is black, to offer a nice contrast with the white+blue colored fan frame. Measuring 143 x 136.8 x 158.4 mm (LxWxH), the cooler weighs about 1.1 kg. It uses a slightly larger heatsink than the one found on the Frio, to which heat is conveyed by six 6 mm-thick heat pipes. The heatsink is ventilated by two 130 mm fans in "push-pull" configuration. The new variant also provides out-of-the-box support for LGA2011 socket.

Responding to the market's new-found love for white colored components, Thermaltake announced a few "Snow Edition" products, including the Frio Snow Edition, pictured below. This cooler uses the same exact design as the original version, but replaces the black+red plastic parts of it with white+blue, including a white colored fan impeller. It is a typical aluminum fin tower-type heatsink with two pre-fitted 120 mm fans in push-pull configuration. It measures 139 x 98 x 165 mm (LxWxH), weighing a little over 1 kg. Another feature of this cooler is out-of-the-box support for socket LGA2011.

Arctic showed of two nearly-identical CPU coolers, the Freezer i30 and Freezer A30. The two are identical till the point where the i30 is designed for Intel sockets only (LGA2011, LGA1155/1156), while the A30, for AMD sockets only (AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2). The two share a tower-type aluminum fin-stack heatsink design, capable of handling thermal loads of up to 320W.

The heatsink uses four 8 mm thick exposed-copper heat pipes that make direct contact with the CPU at the base, and pass through the heatsink, which is then ventilated by a 120 mm PWM-controlled fan with a fancy-looking frame. Rubber standoffs attach the fan to the heatsink dampening vibrations. The retention clips come attached to the heatsink out of the box. A 0.5g syringe of Arctic MX-4 compound is included, while the coolers' base don't come with the compound pre-applied.

Japanese cooling expert Scythe has today announced a new Screw Kit for upgrades to socket LGA2011. Thanks to this new Scythe Screw Kit for Intel LGA 2011 users are able to upgrade new as well as older Scythe CPU Coolers to achieve compatibility to the recently announced enthusiast platform based on socket LGA2011. It is possible to use the new Screw Kit with the CPU Coolers Mugen 3, Mine 2, Ninja 3, Susanoo, Mugen 2 Rev.B and Big Shuriken 2 to upgrade and establish compatibility. Required screws, wrench and manual are contained in the package of the Screw Kit.

Mentioned CPU Coolers are usually mounted with a Scythe backplate designed for various sockets. Socket LGA2011 mainboards are already equipped with an own pre-mounted backplate which is firmly connected to the socket. Scythe Screw Kit for Intel LGA 2011 is utilizing this backplate and achieves a solid as well safe mounting between socket LGA2011 and the Scythe CPU Cooler. Installation still requires the Metal Assembly Clips for socket LGA775, 1155, 1156, 1366 which are delivered with the mentioned CPU Coolers.

Two in every three socket LGA2011 motherboards based on the Intel X79 chipset, globally, are ASUS. The company has amassed 70% global market share of X79 motherboards, according to the latest sales data given out by the company. That's not all, the same data claims ASUS globally holds 50% of the Z68 motherboard market, and 60% of the P67 motherboard market. ASUS' X79 motherboard lineup includes four models in the P9X79 series: the P9X79, P9X79 Pro, P9X79 Deluxe, P9X79 WS; three models in the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rampage IV series: the Rampage IV Extreme, Rampage IV Formula, and Rampage IV Gene; and Sabertooth X79.

Sapphire Technology, a leading manufacturer and global supplier of graphics, mainboard and multimedia solutions has just announced a new mainboard developed to support the latest family of CPUs from Intel, the Sapphire Pure Black X79N.

The Sapphire Pure Black X79N is a full ATX sized board that supports the latest generation Intel processor family using socket LGA 2011. It has 4 DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB of quad channel memory, including the latest high speed types.

In its 20th year of service, Cooler Master, an industry leading chassis, thermal solution, power supply, peripheral, and accessory manufacturer, today announced the successor to a world renowned chassis line, the Cosmos II. Incomparable in design and specifications, the Cosmos II comes in as among the first of its type. It is an Ultra Tower; a benchmark for all enclosures that exist and all that follow.

Inspired by luxurious supercars, the exterior of the Cosmos II melds aluminum, steel, and mesh into an elegant artistic piece. It utilizes a high-grade aluminum for its primary construction and form. This is supplemented by steel and mesh to add to strength, stability, and overall appeal. It maintains its trademark Cosmos profile and outlook with its reinforced aluminum rails while being further refined for today's advancements in air/water cooling, peripheral support, and styling. Following the supercar feel, the large aluminum side panels swing wide open with a small press of a button. Aluminum sliding doors adorn the well equipped fan and LED control and I/O ports function panel on the top of the case along with the front drive bays. These serve to obscure unsightly cabling and protect drive bays and devices.

Intel is working on a new four-socket LGA2011 Server Board product, S4600LH (codename "Lizard Head Pass"), which is capable of holding a total of 1 terabyte of RAM. It is designed mainly for high-performance computing and math-intensive server applications, such as video streaming sites using it for transcoding, etc. The board is able to achieve such large memory expansion room, by providing three DIMM slots per memory channel. Each socket gives four memory channels.

The board supports 8-core Xeon E5-4600 series Sandy Bridge-EP processors. It is driven by Intel C600 "Patsburg" chipset with up to 8 SCU ports and 2 SATA 6 Gb/s ports. There are no standard expansion slots on the board as such, but there are two PCI-Express 3.0 x48 risers, to which daughterboards with three x16 slots each, can be attached (as shown in the CGI drawing below). Apart from these PCIe x48 risers, there is one PCIe 3.0 x8 I/O module on board. The board features dual Intel LAN with VT support. KVM and BMT logic is in-built. The Server Board S4600LH from Intel will be available in Q2 2012.

Last week, a Taiwanese overclocker putting his OC workbench through an relatively laxed OC stress test saw its Gigabyte X79 UD3 motherboard go bust. Its CPU VRM couldn't cope with the stress, and blew a MOSFET. At the time, people responding to his video condoled him for his bad luck. It appears now that his wasn't a one-off case of "bad-egg". Gigabyte, in its latest press release on its Chinese website, noted the issue. Apparently it received several such complaints from overclockers where even moderate voltage-assisted CPU OC fried its VRM. The issue was found to be widespread, among three of its main socket LGA2011 products, the GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2.

Apparently, the issue is caused by a cocktail of bad firmware to complement the board's PWM circuitry, and bad quality PWM components. As an immediate remedy, Gigabyte issued a BIOS update for the affected products. This BIOS, however, will cripple the board's overclocking abilities. The new BIOS will throttle CPU when subjected to extreme stress, to save the VRM. The BIOS remedy is only for those who opt to keep their boards, or don't subject the board to extreme tuning. The other remedy, is to return the board to Gigabyte, for a free replacement when the "right" boards are available. Gigabyte also announced a general recall of the GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2, from the market. A video of the "unlucky" (not anymore) overclocker's day going bad, can be watched here.Update (29/12): Gigabyte's German office wrote to us and explained that on their end they find the problem to be because of bad firmware, and not bad component quality; and that unlike Gigabyte Taiwan, they are not recalling products or soliciting replacements, but asking users to update their BIOS to the latest available. Gigabyte Germany set up a hotline for German customers, that's 040-253304-55.

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 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.

German PC cooling and power manufacturer Be Quiet announced a free compatibility upgrade for all its customers. The upgrade gives users support for Intel's latest LGA2011 socket platform, and is particularly well timed, since some of the company's best CPU coolers were released only recently, such as its famed Dark Rock series, which are more than capable of handling 130W TDP processors, which LGA2011 Core i7 processors, are. The LGA2011 mounting kit can be availed for free (including shipping charges), by filling up a request form, and supplying Be Quiet with product serial numbers, or any proof of ownership of an LGA2011 motherboard. The request form can be filled here.

Zalman took its first dip into water cooling after a while, with the CNPS20LQ, a self-contained (closed loop) CPU cooler. Designed and made originally by Asetek, a well-established brand name in OEM water cooling solutions, the CNPS20LQ uses a single-fan (dual-fan capable) radiator design. Its radiator measures 120 (W) x 158 (L) x 25 (H) mm. The radiator houses a small reservoir. The block houses a pump, which draws power from standard 4-pin CPU power header, and supports PWM control. The two are connected by flexible tubing. The block features a copper base with pre-applied thermal interface material. The CNPS20LQ supports all current socket types, including Intel LGA2011, LGA1155/1156, LGA1366, LGA775; AMD AM3+, FM1, and AM3/AM2+/AM2. It is priced at €69.90.

Taiwanese company MSI has today unveiled the eight DIMM version of its X79A-GD45 motherboard released last month. This new, module-enriched board is called X79A-GD45 (8D), it supports LGA2011 (Sandy Bridge-E) processors, and, according to MSI, can handle up to 128 GB of RAM (G.Skill will need to take notice).

The X79A-GD45 (8D) features Military Class III components (DrMOS II, Hi-C CAP, Solid CAP, Super Ferrite Choke), the mentioned eight (DDR3-2400) memory slots, two SATA 6.0 Gbps and four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, plus three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots.

MSI's board also comes with one PCIe x1 slot, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 ports (two on the back plate, two via a header), 7.1-channel audio, Click BIOS II (UEFI), and the OC Genie II overclocking function. The X79A-GD45 (8D) has yet to be priced but since its quad-DIMM sibling costs 195 Euro, we're thinking it will go over the 200 Euro mark.

Intel's Desktop Board division didn't miss out on the Sandy Bridge-E LGA2011 platform launch, after all, it's ceremonial for Intel to launch a new generation of processors with its own branded motherboards that are fully compatible with them. While Intel had two models of LGA2011 motherboards in the pipeline, the DX79SI and DX79TO, only the former was launched in November, which made it to most platform reviewers. The DX79SI was launched at a price point of US $289 - $299 MSRP, though some retailers easily set that price above $300. The new DX79TO is designed to be a down-scaled version of the DX79SI, targeting a price range of $203 - $208, according to ARK. Naturally then, the price that's 30% lower than that of the DX79SI invites some aggressive feature-cutting.

To begin with, the DX79TO could have a slightly slimmer CPU VRM. Thankfully, it doesn't cheap out much on VRM heatsinks, with the same exact ones found on the DX79SI. The heatsink cooling the VRM area south of the socket is not linked to the PCH heatsink with a heat-pipe, like on the DX79SI. The PCH heatsink itself looks slightly slimmer, though it's not a major area of concern. The CPU socket is still wired to as many as eight DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory.

Earlier this week, a report tabled the model numbers of Intel's 2012 Core processor family based on the "Ivy Bridge" silicon. Its processor model number scheme consisted of Core i5/i7 3000 series, targeting various market price points. Many of these model numbers are confirmed on the latest roadmap slide detailing the Core processor family for 2012. We are also getting to see what the nomenclature of next-generation Core i3 processors could look like.

The slide shows that Ivy Bridge processors will start selling in Q2 2012, which is consistent with reports of an April 2012 launch. Intel will begin with Core i3-32xx (xx = TBD), i5-3450, i5-3550, i5-3570K, i7-3770, and i7-3770K. Around this time, there will be a market transition among cheaper Core i3 parts. In Q3 2012, i5-3470 and i5-3570 will displace i5-3450 and i5-3550; while a faster Core i7-37x0K processor will displace the i7-3770K. The market transition among some Core i3 parts will continue in Q3. Q4 2012 will largely resemble Q3, except that the lower-end Core i3 lineup will have fully transitioned to Ivy Bridge. There will be no changes in the LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E HEDT lineup, except that an affordable quad-core part will be added in Q1 2012. For quick reference, we re-posted the table from the older report.