Asus announces its Z68 boards

[hsakarp_kahtap]

Although a little bit on the early side, Asus has announced its Intel Z68 chipset based motherboards without giving away too much information. Currently the only board listed on the manufacturer's website is the P8Z68-V Pro, although the announcement did at least give us an early glance at the Maximus IV Gene-Z, Asus' ROG mATX board.

The picture of the board is tiny and it's hard to make out a lot of details, but from what we can see it's clear that the Maximus IV Gene-Z has a pair of PCI Express x16 slots as well as a single x4 slot. The space between the x16 slots is taken up by what mostly appears to be capacitors. There are no additional SATA ports on this board, so the 4+2 SATA 3Gbps/6Gbps standard Intel chipset ports is all you get. The board appears to have a front header for a pair of USB 3.0 ports as well which is a nice addition



Around the back we can see a PS/2 port, what appears to be eight USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a pair of eSATA ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI port and 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out. The board will come with Lucid Logix Virtu graphics switching software in the box, but apart from that we don't know much else about the board. Hopefully it won't be too long until we have more details on this board and Asus other upcoming Z68 products.

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[hellnoire]

Would be nice to see a price for it... I'm debating about making my own gaming system, and if it's small form mobo, it would be best.

[JayCub]

Thank you Prakash interesting read, it is a small form factor board going by the gene boards i have read about and the lack of pci express lanes, prices are usually good for these boards and they are still premium boards all the same, pity the rampage III didn't have enough front usb 2.0 headers, but i wouldn't mind a couple of the usb 3.0. some nice touches with the graphics card, only 2 x 6Gbps ports ok i suppose if you use one mechanical hard drive and 1 sata III SSD

ok so it says matx in the first paragraph i missed that.

[Bearcat]

Thanks Prakash. Something to keep in mind for my future build.

[hsakarp_kahtap]

welcome guys.... the only this is missing is its 3 ways sli/crossfire , so anyone who want to build a hi end gaming desktop please keep this in mind.

[JayCub]

From the picture even if you went SLI it looks like you would lose the pci express lane, from browsing the web i have see few gains from SLI unless it's to increase bench mark scores, so i would imagine one good card and you would have a decent high end gaming machine on your hands either way it's a cracking mobo. If money was no object i would be singing a different tune

[Bearcat]

If money was no object i would be singing a different tune

Well Jay, there is always the Bank of Indranil!

[JayCub]

I tried there Bear and im out of luck and Sharon is taking her money on holiday, lots of hardware emerging that i would like to test out these days, at one time it was for geeks only now anyone can join the club.. which makes sense

[Bearcat]

lots of hardware emerging that i would like to test out these days

This is true Jay and it is driving me crazy trying to decide what I want to buy!

[JayCub]

Really depends what you want to have it for gaming/media, i want this one to handle anything thrown at it games storage media, as long as it responds quickly in all these scenarios im happy, i have windows XP mode with 32bit color which made me smile as the best i got before was 23bit and it responds really well as i can use 7 and XP at the same time, just need to test a few games and see how well it handles them