SFF.Network Many 200-Series Motherboards Leaked ahead of CES

With Intel's Kaby Lake soon to be released, many motherboard manufacturers are gearing up for their Intel chipset 200-series lineup. Although new features over the 100-series are limited, this did not keep board manufacturers from innovating and trying to bring something unique to the table.

Read more here.

 

[Kmpkt]

Glad to see Motherboard makers getting away from Red + Black or bust for motherboard designs (except for retard MSI). Strix looks pretty cool and I'm thinking the silver/black AsRock would look amazing in one of the new S4 Minis with an Engine 27. Was thinking I'd skip Kaby lake and Z270, but I might buy one of these boards for my 6700T (Z270 has full Skylake support, right?).

Also <3 the 3.1 header on the Strix.

 

[Phuncz]

Also <3 the 3.1 header on the Strix.

Indeed, on the top-left it's hidden quite well. I'm loving the layout of the Asus STRIX Z270i, optimal placement for many of the thicker cables.
The M.2 heatsink that's also a chipset heatsink is very interesting as a concept.

Some other "remarkable" boards due to their "design":

What all this RGB mayhem resulted in is a lot of monochromatic board designs. So that's atleast a plus.

 

[jeshikat]

Also <3 the 3.1 header on the Strix.

Sweet, I didn't notice that at first glance. Now I'm wondering what the Impact will bring to the table, or if we'll even see a Z270 Impact.

 

[Kwirek]

Some nice designs, I like the monochrome style. Not sure if I like it more than no paint at all, but it is striking. :-)

 

[3lfk1ng]

I love the muted look of the MSI Titanium. Hopefully there will be an ITX variant.
Not entirely sure why the ram needs reinforcement but... w/e

 

[jeshikat]

Hm, I need to carefully look at them all but the only mATX board I see that supports SLI is the Strix.

 

[Kmpkt]

Looks like a couple of those ATX boards (Titanium and Maximus) have 8 + 4 and 8 + 8 EPS. Is that normal for those sorts of boards? I've never seen that before.

 

[jeshikat]

Yup, it's for increased current capacity for extreme overclocking. My Asus X99-M WS microATX board has 2x 8-pin CPU connectors.

 

[confusis]

It's for that extra OC powaaaaaaaa

I'm guessing they are using it for PCIe power as well, help support cards like the RX480?

 

[Kmpkt]

Would be really damned nice if they just had a couple of extra headers on the motherboard and the slots could push 150-200W. Maybe PCIe 4.0 will pull this off.

 

[PNP]

Still no Z270 Gryphon. Ah well, Coffee Lake it is.

 

[jeshikat]

I'm guessing they are using it for PCIe power as well, help support cards like the RX480?

No, those are just for the CPU. Some boards (like my X99-M WS again) has a separate (optional) power connector just for the PCIe slots.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Dammit, that ATX monster only has 2x DDR4 and 1x DDR3 ... what's the point of it ?

Did I just read LED DJ on the IO shroud ? .............

 

[3lfk1ng]

Ya, as much as that 2+1 memory configuration is complete fail, the shape of that motherboard would make for some nice cable organization.

 

[Therandomness]

Having less memory slots (and therefore DIMMs) can help with overclocking (idk why) and let higher overclocks (5GHz+) be more stable. It's the same reason why the Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion has only 4 DIMM slots instead of 8.

 

[3lfk1ng]

Yea and it's been that way for a long time.

My previous board (Asus Gene-Z/GEN3 z68) would not hit 5.1GHz with 4 sticks of ram.
If I removed two it didn't have an issue. I was stuck at just 5.0GHz as a result (to use all 4 slots as I wanted).

I think it's just due to the lack of voltage being consumed.

 

[Phuncz]

The 2+1 memory on the Apex board is for troubleshooting your overclocked RAM.

My previous board (Asus Gene-Z/GEN3 z68) would not hit 5.1GHz with 4 sticks of ram.
If I removed two it didn't have an issue. I was stuck at just 5.0GHz as a result.

I think it's just due to the lack of voltage being consumed.

I have this issue without any overclocking on my Core 2 Quad platform with DDR2 @ 2.1V sticks. Two sticks work, four sticks is like playing the roulette wheel. No amount of voltage control could alleviate it.

 

[jeshikat]

Yup, I went through every single picture on videocardzzzz and I can only confirm the Strix as being capable of SLI for microATX

 

[Phuncz]

I'm hoping AMD's Zen will somehow reinvigorate this lack of proper mATX support.