Here is ASUS' top of the line LGA2011 motherboard targeting the gamer-overclocker market, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rampage IV Extreme. This board offers all the expansion room and connectivity you'll ever need, plus a wealth of nifty features that help overclockers and ease incremental upgrades. To begin with, the Rampage IV Extreme employs a strong digital PWM circuitry that supports heavy voltage-assisted overclocking with Vdroop control.

The LGA2011 socket is wired to eight DDR3 DIMM slots (two per channel). CPU and memory VRM areas are located along three sides of the socket, all cooled by heatsinks that are connected by heat pipes. These VRM heatsinks share heat with the one over the X79 PCH, which is actively cooled by a fan.

The process and anticipation of upgrading to the latest processor has always been some of the most exciting times for every PC enthusiast. But along with the excitement, users are often faced with various decisions such as which motherboard to get, is a memory upgrade needed or will a new CPU cooler have to be purchased? While Thermaltake cannot make most of those decisions for you, if you currently own or are planning to purchase any of the following Thermaltake performance coolers listed below, you will be in good hands. In order to better serve our customers, Thermaltake is proud to announce the Thermaltake FreeUp Program.

The upcoming Intel Sandy Bridge-E processors will be based on socket LGA-2011 as evident from the recent Intel Developer Forum (IDF) conference. Thermaltake is here to ensure that our current and future customers of Thermaltake cooling solutions will have access to the newest technology without the hassle of trying to mock up new mounting or purchasing a new cooler entirely. The LGA-2011 upgrade mounting hardware will be provided free of charge to anyone who has purchased a qualified cooler on or after September 1st 2011. Thermaltake will be incorporating the new LGA-2011 kit into all LGA-2011 compatible coolers in both retail and e-tail space once the Intel Sandy Bridge-E processor launch is confirmed, but this program is to ensure that anyone who supports Thermaltake brands by choosing the qualified cooler as their solution will have the LGA 2011 mounting available to them when they make their purchase or in the case that the cooler may have been in store before the changeover. Thermaltake wants to ensure you can upgrade and use your recently purchased cooler with no worries about future compatibility.

Just as its detractors thought they were done with it, and just as people started to think that attrition among some of its "popular" designers cost EVGA dearly, the company hit back with teaser pictures of the Super Record 3 or SR3, it promised back in June, it would deliver to the enthusiast community. And yes, it matches its description! The SR3 is a dual socket LGA2011 2P enthusiast desktop/workstation motherboard in the E-ATX form factor. Socket 0 is wired to eight DDR3 DIMM slots (two DIMMs/channel), while socket 1 to four slots (1 DIMM/channel).

In LGA2011 2P systems, the processor sitting on socket 0 is wired to the PCH (SR3 looks to have Patsburg-T), while the processor on socket 1 is wired to the one on socket 0 using two QPI links, closing the daisy-chain. Socket 0, apart from its 4 GB/s DMI link, has a PCI-Express 2.0 x4 (another 4 GB/s) link to supplement the DMI link, so the storage controllers don't get bottlenecked with just DMI. Both processors contribute to the PCI-Express lane budget of the motherboard. There are seven PCI-Express x16 slots, among which four are PCI-Express 3.0 x16 capable, every slot is PCI-Express 3.0 x8 capable. NVIDIA 4-way SLI is supported. This board will support Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon processors, though we don't know at this juncture if Core i7 Sandy Bridge-E is 2P capable.

Noctua today announced its new NM-I2011 mounting kit for LGA2011. Continuing Noctua's tradition of supplying its customers with SecuFirm2 mountings free of charge, the NM-I2011 kit allows Noctua users to upgrade to Intel's upcoming LGA2011 socket for Core i7-3000 (Sandy Bridge-E) processors. The new mounting is backwards compatible with all Noctua retail coolers since 2005 and will be supplied to Noctua users free of charge after uploading a proof of purchase on the company's website.

"We feel that product quality and service quality should always go hand in hand, so we're determined to give the best possible support to our customers. Having provided free mounting upgrades for the last generations of Intel and AMD platforms, we're happy to announce that we will continue this tradition with the NM-I2011 kit for LGA2011", says Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "We always like to think of our coolers as safe long-term investments, and even if you bought one of our first models six years ago, you'll still be able to upgrade it to the latest socket technology free of charge."

Gigabyte teased us with pictures of its high-end socket LGA2011 motherboard featured in its G1.Killer series of motherboards designed for the gamer-overclocker market. The G1.Assassin 2, as it's called, is based on the Intel X79 chipset. We don't have landscape pictures of the board, yet, but whatever little bits of pictures we do have, reveal quite a bit. To begin with, this board will retain the black+green "weapon" styling of predecessors in the series. The LGA2011 socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, in sets of two, on either sides of the socket. Each DIMM slot has its own memory channel.

From the CPU VRM heatsink, a heat pipe is finding its way to a stylized X79 PCH heatsink. This heatsink is designed to look like a handgun. Since it's so small, it isn't looking as realistic as the clip design featured on other G1.Killer motherboards. There are just six internal SATA ports we can find from the picture, two 6 Gb/s, and four 3 Gb/s. In terms of expansion slots, we could spot three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, these could be arranged in the x16/x16/NC or x16/x8/x8 lane configuration.

EVGA was missing on the LGA2011 motherboard wall at this year's Computex event in June. EVGA is one of the top brands overclockers and enthusiasts look forward to, for motherboards. As a late consolation, EVGA gave out a teaser picture of one of its upcoming X79 motherboards a little later in June. At GeForce LAN 6, however, EVGA made full use of the spotlight to unveil its X79 Classified (E799), a top-tier socket LGA2011 motherboard clearly designed for overclockers.

The X79 Classified uses a traditional LGA2011 motherboard layout, but with wide open spaces to make insulating it (against condensation) easier. The CPU power delivery seems to be in the hands of some very high-grade VRM design, it draws power from two 8-pin EPS connectors apart from the 24-pin ATX (that's right-angled). There are just four DDR3 DIMM slots, one per memory channel. A 4-phase memory VRM is deployed. Over the chipset area, a large contiguous heatsink covers most hot components in the central-right region. We don't expect there to be a bridge chip.

Zalman announced its latest high-end CPU air cooler, the CNPS12X. This beast was first shown to public at this year's Computex trade-show, back in early June. Between then and now, the CNPS12X got some important retention module changes that make it fully compatible with the upcoming LGA2011 socket on which "Sandy Bridge-E" Core i7 processors are based, as well as AMD AM3+ and FM1. Measuring 151 x 132 x 154 mm (L x W x H), and weighing exactly 1 kg, the CNPS12X uses a design that's essentially identical to that of the NH-D14 from Noctua, that of two fin stacks. It's just that the stacks here are somewhat circular in shape, and that the CNPS12X uses three fans: an intake (before the first stack), a conveyer (between the two stacks), and an exhaust (after the second stack). All three fans are 120 mm in size, and are illuminated by blue LEDs.

The fans seem to be using 3-pin (voltage) method of speed control. Supplied with the cooler are three RC5 intermediate resistors, which make the fans spin at speeds between 850 and 1100 RPM with as low as 22 dBA noise output. Without the RC5, the fans spin between 950 and 1200 RPM, with at least 24 dBA noise output. The heatsink is made almost entirely of dark nickel-plated copper, with certain aluminum parts. Heat is conveyed to the two copper fin stacks by six nickel-plated copper heat pipes, that make direct contact with the CPU at base. Zalman did not give out pricing and availability information.

ASRock is readying is new, high-end socket LGA2011 motherboard targeting the upper-most tier of the PC enthusiast market, the X79 Extreme7. This board will be a part of the company's first wave of LGA2011 motherboards, which are slated for mid-November, 2011. Pictures scored by XFastest reveal the board to be filled to the brim with features. The CPU socket is powered by a 16-phase VRM making use of high-grade chokes, and server-grade poscap capacitors.

The socket is wired to six DDR3 DIMM slots arranged in sets of three on either sides of the socket, powered by a 4-phase VRM. Among channels A, B, C, and D; channels B and D have two DIMM slots wired, so if you have four DDR3 modules, you should populate slots 0, 2, 3, and 5; to take advantage of quad-channel DDR3 memory. There are heatsinks over the memory VRM areas, that are connected to the heatsink over the CPU VRM using heat pipes.

In 2012, it's curtain's for Intel's iconic Nehalem/Tylersburg platform, with the company issuing the Intel X58 chipset a schedule for discontinuation. The chipset has exactly 12 more months to attain EOL (end of life) status. Intel will continue to take orders for Intel X58 till April 27, 2012, the last of these orders will have shipped by October 12, 2012. Intel X58 + ICH10/R is the de facto chipset for Intel's Core i7 client processors in the LGA1366 package.

To motherboard vendors, the X58 I/O Hub (northbridge) is priced at US $39, and another $14 for the ICH10R southbridge. In November 2011, Intel is releasing the proper successor for the Nehalem/Tylersburg platform, the Sandy Bridge-E/Patsburg, consisting of Core i7 processors in the LGA2011 package, and Intel X79 chipset.

We know how chip manufacturers aren't usually very keen on overclocking of their products, but here, Intel explains the actual steps to take in achieving a great overclock! And oddly enough, this includes their locked CPUs as well, which raises the question of why lock them at all? Bit-tech looked into overclocking the new LGA2011 Sandy Bridge E in detail.Intel highlights the key areas for overclocking Sandy Bridge E processors, and gives a practical example of a 4.74 GHz overclock

Last week, ECS showed off its top-of-the-line HEDT (high-end desktop) segment motherboard in the making, the X79R-AX Black Series. This socket LGA2011 motherboard based on the Intel X79 chipset is expected to be launched along with the Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" processors. It targets the gamer-overclocker market, providing support for up to four graphics cards in 4-way SLI and CrossFire. The LGA2011 socket is powered by a 14-phase VRM, is is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots on its either sides, supporting up to 32 GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory.

Expansion slots include four PCI-Express 3.0 x16, that can be electrically configured as x16/NC/x16/NC (single card or 2-way), x16/NC/x8/x8 (3-way), and x8/x8/x8/x8 (4-way). Other slots include two PCI-Express x1. Storage connectivity includes 12 internal SATA ports, and two eSATA. The data-rates of the internal ports are not known, but it most likely has two SATA 6 Gb/s and four SATA 3 Gb/s ports wired to the X79 PCH, while the remaining six ports are driven by additional SATA 6 Gb/s 2-port controllers. The eSATA ports run at 6 Gb/s.

Gigabyte surprised many last year, when it broke its decade-long tradition of blue-colored PCBs to unveil its first black ones. Pictures of the first black PCB Gigabyte boards were first dismissed as Photoshop jobs, but after some confirmation, news posts carried quite some shock-value. It's such small things that Gigabyte has known to be quite particular about. Not that it's bad, Gigabyte is the second biggest motherboard vendor because many of its rigid design policies paid off, but some of these could work against the company.

One such has been the company's reluctance to use UEFI firmware on its motherboards. With socket LGA1155 and AM3+, we saw motherboard vendors of all shapes and sizes, including much smaller ones such as BIOSTAR adopt UEFI. Besides allowing vendors to deploy mouse-driven graphical user interface for the CMOS Setup program, UEFI addresses many glaring limitations of legacy BIOS, which hasn't changed much over decades. UEFI allows you to boot from volumes bigger than 2.2 TB in size. Eventually, storage volumes several terabytes in size will become mainstream, and that's when the ticking time-bomb that is BIOS, will blow.

At IDF, motherboard vendors got to show off their near-complete socket LGA2011 motherboards based on the X79 chipset. Many of these were half-built and straight out of R&D at this year's Computex event, back in June. Gigabyte showed off its first X79 motherboards, the GA-X79-UD5, GA-X79-UD7, and G1.Assassin 2. Unlike previous generations of high-end Gigabyte motherboards, the UD7 isn't a beefed-up UD5 with added features and better cooling. The two are entirely different right from the PCB, to the features they offer.

The UD5 targets premium users, with eight DDR3 DIMM slots, geared for 3-card SLI/CrossFire, while the UD7 is bleeding-edge with just four DDR3 DIMM slots, but a wealth of overclocking features and support for 4-card SLI/Crossfire. Then there's the G1.Assassin 2, which targets the gamer-overclocker market with neat features such as hardware-accelerated Creative X-Fi audio and Bigfoot Killer NIC, with support for 3-card SLI/Crossfire.

Here are the first pictures of Intel Desktop Board Extreme Series DX79SI. This is the first socket LGA2011 we've seen that has eight DDR3 DIMM slots (four on either side of the socket, two DIMMs per channel), every other board has barely enough room for four. LGA2011 supports quad-channel DDR3 memory, yielding 33% bandwidth gain over triple-channel DDR3 and 100% gain over dual-channel DDR3. Despite its large memory area, the DX79SI sticks to standard ATX board dimensions. This is thanks to some smart engineering.

While on other LGA2011 boards, the CPU VRM is concentrated to the north of the socket, on this board, it is split between the north and south of the socket. Both areas have heatsinks, and the VRM area to the south is located where older generations of motherboards would typically have the northbridge chip. X79 is a single-chip chipset, located where the PCH/southbridge typically is.

Back in August, it was reported that the retail packages of some, if not all, Intel's Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 LGA2011 processors will not pack the certified cooling solution like Core i7 LGA1366 processors do. It was also reported that Intel will sell its own-branded cooling solutions separately. It became a little obvious right then, that Intel won't selling dinky-little heatsinks that cost a couple of dozen Dollars. At the ongoing IDF event, Intel displayed its first retail-packaged cooling solution that's not only LGA2011-compatible, but also supports older socket types such as LGA1155, LGA1156, and LGA1366.

The cooling solution is a closed-loop (self-contained) liquid cooler made by water cooling OEM Asetek. Called the RTS2011LC, the cooler is rated to cool processors with TDP of up to 130W. The cooler consists of an exposed-copper block that also houses the pump, tough and flexible tubing that runs to the radiator assembly, which houses a reservoir, and a fancy-looking 120 mm fan. Along with the fan, the Intel logo on the block lights up blue. The radiator used looks similar to that on the Hydro Series H70, a popular cooler by Corsair, which is also made by Asetek. Expected to be available around the same time as Core i7 LGA2011 processors, the Intel RTS2011LC could command a price over $99.

Even as AMD struggles to get its FX series processors out, and into to the market, Intel seems to be doing the opposite: trying to get Sandy Bridge-E (enthusiast) out as quickly as possible. The new high-end desktop/workstation platform was slated for December, and then there was news that chipset delays could push it into 2012. Fresh news pin-points the launch date to Week 46 of 2011, more specifically, November 15. On that day, Intel will have processors as well as compatible Desktop Board products (Intel-branded motherboards) out in the markets, ready for purchase. Ideally, motherboard vendors should have their socket LGA2011 products stocked up by then, too.

Intel will begin the Sandy Bridge-E platform with Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition 6-core Unlocked processor, Core i7-3930K 6-core Unlocked processor, and Core i7-3820 4-core processor. Intel X79 Express is the De facto desktop chipset. The first compatible Intel Desktop Board products include DX79SI, and DX79TO.

Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors in the LGA2011 package, codenamed "Sandy Bridge-E," will come in a unique package that's completely different from what's being reported as AMD's, in which self-contained liquid CPU coolers will be bundled with some FX-series processors. Intel's upcoming Core i7-3820, Core i7-3930K and the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor boxes will lack Intel's certified (stock) heatsink-fan (HSF). Instead, Intel plans to sell the certified coolers separately, probably having the same market reach and availability as the processors themselves.

The idea behind this is that the target users of Sandy Bridge-E will most likely use third-party cooling solutions. Hence it makes sense to save them of a chunk of metal they'll probably never use. For those who do use stock cooling, seldom/never overclock, and rely on the Intel certification to go with the cooler, Intel will have the certified cooler available separately for purchase, with its retail partners. Sandy Bridge-E processors have a rated TDP of 130W, though tests by those having access to engineering samples have shown that it can reach as much as 180W on load, even without overclocking. It is expected that PC cooling products manufacturers will have entire lines of LGA2011-ready coolers in time for the launch of Sandy Bridge-E.

Last month, there reports of Intel pushing its Sandy Bridge-E enthusiast desktop platform to 2011. It was originally scheduled for 2011, but was reportedly delayed to 2012 because of issues Intel was facing with its flagship desktop chipset, codenamed Patsburg-D. Intel will be launching Sandy Bridge-E this year, but the first wave of motherboards will feature Patsburg-A/B chipsets, which have fewer SATA 6 Gb/s ports than Patsburg-D.

Intel put its launch plans on paper with its latest desktop platform roadmap, that shows the first three models of socket LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors, the six-core Core i7-3960X, Core i7-3930K, and the quad-core Core i7-3820, featuring in the Q4 2011 column. The roadmap shows that the three processors will hold their market-positions till Q2-2012, when Intel will release faster models to displace them. The roadmap slide also shows that Ivy Bridge, Intel's next-generation socket LGA1155 processors that are built on the 22 nm fab process, will be released in March or April 2012, and not early 2012 as speculated earlier.

Slides of a key presentation to Intel's partners was leaked to sections of the media, which reveal Intel's own performance testing of the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition, the top-model of the socket LGA2011 "Sandy Bridge-E" processor series. Meet the family here. In its comparison, Intel maintained the Core i7-990X Extreme Edition socket LGA1366 processor as this generation's top offering. It was pitted against the Core i7-3960X in a battery of tests that included some enthusiast favourites such as Cinebench 11.5, POV-Ray 3.7, 3DMark 11 physics, Pro-Show Gold 4.5, and some OEM favourites such as SPECint_rate base2006, SPECfp_rate base2006, and SiSoft SANDRA 2011B multimedia and memory bandwidth.

From these test results, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition is pitched to be about 47.25% faster on average, compared to Core i7-990X Extreme Edition. Intel is attributing the performance boost, apart from the normal IPC increase, to the 33% higher bandwidth thanks to the quad-channel DDR3 IMC, and the new AVX instruction set that accelerates math-heavy tasks such as encoding. The Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition is an upcoming socket LGA2011 six-core processor that is clocked at 3.30 GHz, with Turbo Boost speed of up to 3.90 GHz, with 12 threads enabled by HyperThreading technology, and 15 MB L3 cache. It will release by either late 2011 or early 2012.

EVGA teased its community with a picture of one of its first single-socket LGA2011 motherboards. The graphics card major was missed at this year's Computex event at the wall holding upcoming LGA2011 boards. The company then pacified its fans with news that it was working on a monstrous dual-LGA2011 motherboard along the lines of the SR-2. We can't tell very much about the board in the picture below, except that it has socket LGA2011 with a typical CPU area layout, makes smart use of the congested VRM area with high-C capacitors and driver-MOSFETs, and looks to have some innovations such as right-angled 24-pin ATX power connector. Power, reset, and clear CMOS buttons are found at a place accessible to overclockers, so are some voltage measurement points. One can also see a heat pipe winding its way about into the frame on the top-left corner. That's about it with what we can tell from the picture.

Here are details of the first three models of Intel's "Sandy Bridge-E" Core i7 processors in the LGA2011 package. Some of these details were made public as early as mid-April. It was then analyzed that Intel was driving two distinct lines of LGA2011 client processors: Enthusiast and Performance, and within Performance, there were BClk multiplier-unlocked six-core, and locked quad-core chips. With the new series, Intel will move to the 3000 series of processor model numbering, indicating that the new processors will be part of Intel's 3rd generation Core processors, even though they're based on the Sandy Bridge architecture.

Before we move to the model numbers, here's a quick run up of the brand extenders. "X" denotes Extreme Edition, "K" denotes "Unlocked" (BClk multipler unlocked). Leading the pack will be Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition. This six-core (6 cores, 12 threads with HTT) chip has a nominal clock speed of 3.30 GHz, Turbo Boost speed of up to 3.90 GHz, and features the full 15 MB of L3 cache present on the Sandy Bridge-E silicon. Expect this chip to have a four figure price-tag.

Sandy Bridge-E is Intel's next-generation high-end desktop and enterprise platform that is an upscale of the Sandy Bridge platform the company launched early this year. At this year's major trade-shows such as Computex, motherboard partners displayed their socket LGA2011 motherboards with the complete feature-set of the platform. Apart from the large socket, and memory slots at odd places, the most distinct feature of those motherboards was the plethora of SATA ports they came with. Even the most [relatively] low-end LGA2011 motherboards had around 10 SATA ports, most of which were 6 Gb/s. Platform schematics also made it to the public domain around that time, revealing a key feature that makes driving 8 SATA 6 Gb/s ports possible: a supplementary PCI-Express 3.0 x4 link between the X79 PCH and the LGA2011 processor, that adds 16 GB/s (8 GB/s per direction) of bandwidth between the processor and the chipset, without which the storage controller would be severely bottlenecked with the DMI Gen2 (physical PCI-Express 2.0 x4), with its puny 8 GB/s (4 GB/s per direction) bandwidth.

Originally slated for Q4 2011, Intel's Sandy Bridge-E platform was reported to have been delayed to Q1 2012. It is now emerging that Patsburg-D, the variant of Patsburg X79 chipset, which features 8 SATA/SAS 6 Gb/s ports, which requires that supplementary PCI-E 3.0 x4 link, may be causing a development hold up at Intel. So, the company is planning on launching the platform this year itself, but with Patsburg-B, a variant of the chipset that has only four SATA/SAS 6 Gb/s ports, and relies entirely on DMI as the chipset interconnect. The slide below lists out differences between the many variants of Patsburg PCH. DMI would give the platform the same amount of chipset interconnect bandwidth as today's LGA1155-Cougar Point platform. It is, however possible that the higher Patsburg-D/X variants will be launched when Intel irons out whatever issues exist with them.

At this year's Computex event, we were treated to socket LGA2011 motherboards by various motherboard manufacturers, except EVGA. The company makes some of the highest grade enthusiast motherboards in the Intel platform, and so it was missed. It is however, said to be working on a monstrous dual-socket LGA2011 motherboard based on the Intel X79 chipset, that would replace its dual-socket LGA1366 EVGA SR-2.

Just imagine, such a monstrosity would combine two six/eight/twelve-core LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors with eight channels of DDR3 memory, and four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (electrical x16) links to drive its graphics cards and connectivity. EVGA said that it will have single-socket LGA2011 motherboards by the time the platform launches, and this dual-LGA2011 about a month later.

Weren't we all both surprised and touched that Noctua gave away free mounting kit upgrades to all owners of compatible Noctua coolers, when the industry was waking up to LGA1366 from LGA775? Noctua plans a similar move, giving away LGA2011 mounting kits to owners of Noctua coolers (any cooler released after 2005). The company showed off its LGA2011 mounting kit prototype at Computex. The kit builds on the SecuFirm 2 design, and lets you install Noctua heatsinks on socket LGA2011 motherboards that seat Sandy Bridge-E processors. Any user of a Noctua CPU heatsink released after 2005 with a proof of purchase will get the kit free of charge. Even otherwise, the kit will be sold at a nominal price, like it did with the LGA1366 mounting kit.

While Sandy Bridge-E LGA2011 processors will come with integrated PCI-Express 3.0 hubs, they're still a couple of quarter financial years away. Meanwhile, MSI jumped the gun on its latest socket LGA1155 Intel Z68-based motherboard with not only support for Intel's upcoming 22 nm Ivy Bridge LGA1155 processors, but also the PCI-Express 3.0 hubs that the new processors come with. While Ivy Bridge has PCI-E 3.0 hub, not just any LGA1155 motherboard can give you PCI-E 3.0 support. It requires slots that are compliant with the new specification, and needs PCI-E 3.0 compliant external switching chips. MSI has both, on its new Z68A-GD80 motherboard, and with it, the bragging rights of being the world's first PCI-E 3.0 compliant motherboard.

PCI-Express 3.0 gives you twice the interface bandwidth as PCI-Express 2.0, which means that PCI-Express 3.0 x8 has the same bandwidth as PCI-Express 2.0 x16. But before you celebrate, let's remind ourselves that you also need a PCI-E 3.0 compliant GPU to make the slots operate at Gen 3.0 speeds. Installing PCI-Express 2.0 GPUs on Gen 3.0 won't run the slots at Gen 3.0 speeds. That aside, the Z68A-GD80 is a sufficiently-equipped enthusiast motherboard featuring 14-phase VRM for the CPU, dual-channel DDR3-2133 support, two PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 with populated), a third PCI-E x16 wired to the Z68 PCH, running at PCI-E 2.0 x4 speeds, and a couple of PCI-E 2.0 x1 and legacy PCI. There are three internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports; eSATA, USB 3.0, make for the rest of the connectivity. There is full-fledged display connectivity, with Lucid Virtu support. Expect this board to be out any time soon.