Asus X58 Rampage III Extreme Motherboard Review

If you're in the market for an X58 motherboard, there are plenty of options available. A quick search fetches countless results that fill a wide range of price points. Budget conscious enthusiasts looking to save some scratch will be happy to find that almost every motherboard maker offers an X58 model under $200. On the other end of the spectrum, companies offer performance enthusiasts and overclockers a number of products that cater to pushing the performance envelope that often manifests itself while attempting to break world records

Asus provides serious hardware enthusiasts an excellent shot of achieving their goals with the Rampage III Extreme X58 motherboard. As the flagship model from the Republic of Gamers product line, it comes with almost every possible feature you could ask for. With an LGA1366 socket, it supports the latest Core i7 processors, providing six DIMM slots that can house up to 24GB of memory. Enough PCI Express 2.0 expansion slots are available for Tri-SLI or Quad-CrossFire configurations, allowing you the capability to maximize your system's pixel pushing power. Note the RIIE has an extended ATX form factor (12" x 10.6") which makes it about an inch wider than standard ATX. 

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ECS H67H2-M: Breaking Free of the Low End

ECS H67H2-M

It's no secret that Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU's are still the talk of the town. Many enthusiasts and system builders are frothing at the mouth waiting for the B3 stepping chipset to become available. With the IRS returning overpaid tax money, this was the time many had planned to upgrade. Several announcements have been made over the past few days leading us to understand that the drought will be over soon!

A part of Sandy Bridge that we haven't yet looked at was one of the biggest features of the 2nd Generation Core processor, the integrated graphics. Intel was able to leverage 32nm technology in building a single die that houses both the CPU and GPU. This means that power use and GPU performance are much improved over Clarkdale/Arrandale processors since that CPU family used a separate die on the processor package to get its integrated graphics. The CPU gave up its integrated memory controller and instead used one on the GPU. This led to higher memory latency, lower memory bandwidth and ultimately lower performance. Though the CPU had great clock speeds, they were over priced for their performance, often being outperformed by Intel's own Core i5 750 which cost less than a number of the Clarkdale i5 CPU's.

MSI Big Bang-Marshal

The Big Bang-Marshal (B3) enthusiast mainboard, which made its debut at CES 2011, used its complete expandability, excellent performance and extreme features to attract the attention of many users and media but did not showcase all the details. During this year's CeBIT2011, the Big Bang-Marshal (B3) will be completed unraveled for consumers. MSI's newest flagship product, the Big Bang-Marshal (B3), not only uses MSI's newest quality standard – built with second generation military standard materials and parts – it also supports the industry's maximum 8 slots PCI-E 2.0x16 design, and is equipped with Creative's top-class X-Fi MB2 sound field enhancement technology. It can simultaneously take care of the three most important elements that gamers and power users care most about: system stability, graphics performance and audio experience.

Overclockers also get the best feature set to push their system to the limit: a 24-phase DrMOS power design, dual 8-PIN CPU power supply, a 6-PIN VGA power supply design -- all which can steadily provide power when overclocking the CPU and mainboard, achieving optimal performance.

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MSI 880GMS-E35

Overview

Auto OC Genie

In the past, users needed to adjust settings for CPU and Memory in BIOS menu to overclock.  The relation between these ratios and clocks speeds are extremely complicated, taking up to 30 minutes to find the right settings for an optimized PC.  Auto OC Genie simplifies it all into one button press. Where high-end CPUs are usually priced around 1000 USD, Auto OC Genie allows you to take a 200 USD CPU (1/5 the price) to reach the same performance. Your C/P ratio rises up 500% immediately for the ultimate value.
 
Features
- The world’s first Auto Overclocking Processor
- Upgrade full system performance in 1 sec
- Auto detect overclocking settings of CPU and Memory
- Compatible with Intel/AMD platform

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MSI P67A-GD80 (B3) Mainboard Debuts

World-renowned mainboard and graphics card manufacturer MSI has released the latest board to support Inte's Sandy Bridge processors and aimed towards enthusiasts: the P67A-GD80 (B3) mainboard. Utilizing MSI's various P67's exclusive specifications and technologies, such as the Military Class II Components standard which symbolizes high quality and stability, the comprehensive OC Genie II one-touch overclocking system, the uEFI-based ClickBIOS technology, and the SuperCharger function that provide mobile devices with the optimal charging. It also has a built in 12 phase DrMOS power supply and 3 sets of PCI-E x16 2.0 expansion slots, providing a more stable power supply for overclocking and for support up to a maximum of three-way multi-GPU computing.

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