News LGA2011 motherboard showcase

the bigger thing is that these boards are completely void of any legacy cruft like Serial ports, floppy connectors, PATA connectors. Not even PCI slots are present on these boards. YAY for the future!

 

Damn, the colour schemes of those Asus Mobo's make my eyes want to curl up and die. o.o Lol, the yellowishness looks quite retro to me.

 

Actually, there are some PCI slots on the ASRock and Gigabyte boards, but apart from that..

It was so annoying having a PATA optical drive, escecially as the X58A-UD3R's PATA port is at the bottom of the board. Result: massive ribbon cable blocking half the airflow in my case. Thankfully that drive has now gone.

 

Yup I skipped everything new. I am still waiting for the next big thing , which I fea will never happen ,because as soon as new hardware comes out two months later something new is announced so I have to wait for that.

 

You do realise you can buy rounded pata leads right?

 

D'oh. Not until just now.

 

Link is not working for me.

Works from the main page, but the link at the top of this thread doesn't.

I so want to get my hands on a LGA2011 board. Been itching to upgrade for ages now. I hope the Asus boards are only that colour for the prototypes, as I love Asus board.. but that colour sucks.

 

The only reason 1366 was as popular as it was is because it came out before 1156.

1366 motherboards were significantly more expensive, triple channel memory didn't show much if any benefits for gaming, and despite what visitors of enthusiast sites such as this may thing, most don't use SLI/xFire setups that really need more than x8/x8.

Now, the more mainstream chipset has come out first, and everyone (enthusiasts included) are jumping on it because it's FAST, and it has all the features they need. When 2011 comes out, most will stick with 1155 unless they're close enough in price to make the draw of 4-channel memory and 6+ core processors worth it.

In conclusion, I agree with you completely, and I think the timing of the releases are the only reason 1366 (which 2011 is supposed to be the successor to) was as popular as it was.

I'm waiting to build a new computer because my i7-860 is still plenty fast and I'm curious to see both 2011 AND AMD's new chips to make a decision. Honestly, I seriously doubt AMD's ability to be competitive on the high end, but I'm always welcome to be surprised.

 

Hi, this is my first post on this forum.

Yes, I decided to skip the Sandy Bridge platform and wait for LGA2011. Currently I'm on a Q9450 and HD5870, I hope this will bring a major performance boost.

 

Ha! What a waste quad dual channel memory. What's the point in upgrading. If I want dual i'll buy I7-2600k. Or just keep my 1156 till they release something with more bawls!

 

??

 

Lolwut? 1366 is not mainstream - seriously retarded is not being aware that Dell, HP, & Lenovo are the largest sellers of PCs, and they're not selling jack for 1366. I spend quite a lot of time on tech/modding sites, and even I'm aware of what's 'mainstream'. The office cubicle jockey has no need for 1366, and companies damn sure aren't going to shell out for it unless there is a demonstrable benefit.

Seriously retarded is the flat declaration that everyone should watercool. My HSF keeps the proc below 50 always, under 40 unless I really push it - why do I need to watercool? Twice the money for a small benefit in cooling, and virtually no noise advantage? No, thanks.

This early in the game, even I'm not going to declare this a fail for Intel. Some decent low-pro memory and a little jiggery-pokery with HSF design, problem solved. If not, suck it up, average gaming citizen. In a lot of cases, Intel's 2-generation-old procs and 4-8GB dual-channel are more than enough, it will be quite a while before you get an appreciable benefit from 16GB quad-channel in you average gamer's comp. Although I will concede if you're already blowing that much money on the platform, you may as well watercool.

 

Look like a whole new batch of coolers will have to be designed to fit inbetween those ram slots.

But then again, what is the percentage of people who would by these boards, actually watercool? Maybe quite high!

 

We've been speaking to MSI about the LGA2011 board they're showing here too today. I'll add pictures when we get back to the hotel.

I'll also add some little extra bits of info about the socket that we managed to squeeze out of one of their designers too.

 

No, no, no.

Quad channel.

Sandy Bridge 2xxx processors - Dual channel.
Nehalem 9xx processors - Triple channel.
LGA 2011 (Sandy Bridge E) - Quad channel.

It's a step up from even the original i7's three channels.

This is why the memory slots are positioned as they are, because of all the additional traces required to the CPU socket

TSB

 

Thank you for opening that up! Somehow I missed that.

 

I wonder if these will be compatible with Haswell? (wouldn't be surprised if they skipped LGA 2011 Ivy Bridge and went straight Haswell instead) does anyone know this?

 

Watercooling coupled with the tall RAM i tend to pick for the improved passive cooling will mean havign to pretty much route the pipes down the centre of the board unnecessarily, also my intention in the future is to put RAM on waterblocks in my next major build, with this i would have to buy an extra block, again more unnecessary complications.

 

So, is it called LGA2011 after the year, or does it have 2011 pins? Or is there simply no good reason for the names?

 

It's got 2,011 pins and it'll be launched in 2011, proof that somebody in Intel does have a sense of humour