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nc.com guys it's still computex 2013 for
some reason I guess it's cuz it's not over yet and we are here in the ASRock
Booth where I am holding a motherboard that looks pretty much like any other
motherboard except for the very outrageous color scheme as well as some
you know water cooling barbs here on the vrm cooling solution and all that kind
of cool stuff you got four PCI Express 16x graphics card oh wait what's that
hold on a minute come over here come have a closer look what is this all
right now I have long said that every motherboard needs to have a matte black
PCB I now officially have to take that
back because the glossy black PCB on the
ASRock OC formula Z87 board enables it
to actually be waterproof roof they have
a live demo here with this system running this video demo right here of
the board receiving its conformal codings see check that out and they have
that demo running on a computer that has
water running over it this is absolutely freaking unbelievable and what you might
think to yourself is well why do I need a a liquid proof motherboard I can think
of a couple reason number one is Extreme overclocking so this board actually
comes with a little a little Nick she right there little Nick she signature so
he is a very famous overclocker he's got his designed by badge on this board when
you are extreme overclocking it is incredibly important to avoid
condensation condensation can destroy your motherboard if you're not using a
Z87 OC formula because wetness can become conductive very very quickly boom
zap it's dead so for extreme overclocking where condensation is an
issue then this is very beneficial now I can even think of applications that this
might be awesome that that aren't extreme overclocking such as liquid
cooling if you're worried about oh a pipe burst somewhere and you get some
water on your board don't worry about it with this board you can actually I mean
I don't I still don't really recommend it you know firing it right up because
the water might have gotten on something else but you won't have to worry about
your motherboard at all it's got a bunch of other cool features including check
this out a status OLED display gone are the days evidently of just like two
little sort of you know singled digit things next to each other now you can
monitor things like temperature as well as base clock and all that kind of cool
stuff right on the motherboard itself you've also got onboard switches dual
BIOS dual USB 3 ports over there at the front onboard overclocking switches as
well as voltage checkpoints right there at the back behind the 24 pin connector
and check this out this is a feature that's going to be very beneficial for
guys like Gamers guys who have a secondary gaming system that they want
to hook up to their monitor so for a long time companies like BenQ have been
releasing monitors that have multiple inputs such as DVI HDMI or dual HDMI so
you can easily run both your computer and your game console through your
monitor but what asrock's done is they've added an HDMI pass through that
allows you to use your computer to switch what is displayed on your monitor
making it a more seamless experience than reaching around to the back of your
computer and unplugging or plugging something in or even reaching up to your
monitor to change the source input so if running water over a motherboard while
it's operating wasn't ridiculous enough for you this right here is the Z87
extreme 11 AC it has Wireless AC it's got overclocking features it supports up
to four-way Crossfire so you can see that running right there and it actually
gets more ludicrous than that so check out this this is an SSD array a massive
number of ssds 22 ssds count them four
wide by five deep and then an extra two that are sitting back there at the back
and I have something to share with you guys these are all connected to the Z87
extreme 11 AC right over here so this is
using the six SATA 3 6 GB per second
connectors that are provided by Intel's chipset you actually can't really see
them all unless you get right in there at that angle so there are six coming
straight out of the board and there are another
16 SAS 3 connectors running off of an
LSI SAS 3 chip that is built into this
motherboard if you have a serious need for storage don't think that you're
limited to just ssds if you want to run
22 SATA 3 or six sata3 with 16 SAS 3
devices off of your board at the same time for whatever reason this is the
only board that is even remotely capable of doing
that but if you don't feel like building your own computer and pouring water all
over it then check out the M8 Series right here this is a new thing from
ASRock it's a DIY barebones unit that is going to allow you you to get that same
ridiculously ludicrously fast gaming experience that we've seen with some
sort of you know some Boutique Builders doing with something like the iby power
Revolt for example except that it's something that you can acquire yourself
and you have the flexibility of choosing your own components and building it
yourself as well now you might have noticed that this is not exactly your
standard runof-the-mill barebones unit it uses an aluminum
chassis that was actually designed by BMW's design group much like the level
10 m Mouse that's right here and the level 10m headset that are sitting right
next to it so wouldn't these make a stunning combination the construction as
I said before is aluminum and ventilation is handled by two 60 mm fans
up here in the top is quite rugged feeling as well I can actually pick the
thing up by one of the handles and I don't have to worry too much about it breaking making it extremely portable
and they've added some unique features as well so here on the front you've got USB 3 super speed and a slot load
optical drive as well as this is kind of neat check this out so you can monitor
things like your CPU clock speed as well as your time and then you can interface
with it with a simple push button interface as well as a rotating rubber
knob with an LED backlight now let's go ahead and see how the magic Works inside
so I'm going to turn it around the wrong way first as if I don't know how this works check this out magnets which are
basically magic as far as I can tell so there's a window on the back how do you
get away with putting a window on the back of a computer case well I'll tell
you how by having extremely clean Cable Management so the case comes cable
managed for you pretty much you don't have to worry about that and you can
actually see the reinforcement that's on the motherboard tray here I mean it's
one of Steve Jobs's design philosophies that a great device should look great
not only on the outside but also on the inside so having clean Cable Management
really does show that attention to detail that not all things achieve the
side window also has kind of a unique octagon based concentric octagon design
that you'll either like or you'll dislike personally I really like it
moving on to the ins side we see very short cable runs which again is a
desirable feature and we also see check this out that is a full-size graphics
card you could fairly easily run pretty much any graphics card you wanted in
here with the exception of sort of ludicrous stuff like a Radeon 7990 but
you could easily get a GTX 780 in here it uses an sfx power supply but don't
worry that won't matter to you because it comes with that it also uses an ITX
motherboard that has onboard Wi-Fi as well as support for up to 2 8 gig dims
of DDR3 and support for for pretty much
any Intel CPU you'd want as long as it's has well so that's an LGA 1150 socket so
you're going to want to put the latest 4670k or 4770k CPU into the unit so I
can never remember this so I'm going to get my lovely assistant to come and tell me this what do you actually have to add
to this system in order to make it functional okay users who buy this M8
series motherboard can have the freedom of choosing their own CPU and graphics
card or if they need more storage then they can add more storage into the
motherboard so three things yeah three things so why couldn't I remember that
uh maybe because its appearances is too stunning yeah I'm certainly stunned
right now so guys don't miss any of our computex 2013 coverage remember our trip
to the show this year is powered by Western Digital as well as Corsair
Vengeance gaming peripherals and nci.com as always guys don't forget to make sure
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