
MicroStar International (MSI) has officially announced their latest flagship mainboard for the Intel® X79 Express chipset, the Big Bang-XPower II.
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Before we begin, OCDrift.com would like to thank Zeon PC Trading for the opportunity given to test this mainboard and eventually making this review a reality.
Intel Z68 is the latest chipset supporting their 2nd Generation Core-i series. Before Z68, there’s H61, H67 and P67 chipsets. While Z68 chipset is certainly a not new but still, we reckon that it’s still a chipset worth to invest for. Why? Because the newly launched X79 chipset is mainly for enthusiast and big-spenders with high buying power as the Sandy Bridge-E processors pricing is currently on the high side now. As for the 2nd Generation Core-i series processor, widely known as Sandy Bridge is now entering the mainstream market providing one of the best price/performance ratio solution.
Asrock Z68 Fatal1ty GEN3 is the top of the line mainboard among Asrock Z68 mainboards. For ASRock high-end models, it can be easily identified via the Red-Black colour scheme and the “Fatal1ty” theme. We are glad to be given the honour to review this beast and please do continue exploring this review to know more about this mainboard.
Official Link – Enter
Asrock Fatal1ty Microsite – Enter
ZEON PC Trading (ASRock Distributor, Malaysia) – Enter
Another masterpiece born from Shamino’s hands, this should be best motherboard cater for extreme overclockers up to date, why? Let’s go through of my 3 short pages write-up and you will know why and who are the target users with all features that come with this ROG.
Have you ever experience with graphics card voltage modification before? Well, if you do, you gonna love this feature. In the past, we used to solder variable resistor to graphics card in order to overclock further, even on watercooling it does scale pretty satisfiable . Ever since GTX 200 series generation, manufacturer starting to implement voltage controller on graphics card where by voltage can be controlled by software, it is pretty convenient and without voiding warranty. Nevertheless, physical vmod still necessary for extreme overclocking, eg prevent OCP kick in.
With VGA Hot-wire, a built-in variable resistor control through motherboard BIOS, voltage increment in offset basis.
On Rampage IV Extreme, it has 2 sets of VGA Hot-wire, 6pins header per set, and each set for single graphics card.
Each set consists of :-
Voltage modification point(feedback or Vsense loop) goes to RED header while voltage measurement goes to BLACK header.
CAUTION: GROUND IS NOT NEEDED HERE, DO NOT CONNECT GROUND TO BLACK HEADER
In order to avoid confusion during extreme overclocking session, ASUS bundled with labeling sticker.
Note:
To cater all graphics card, voltage increment are on offset basic.
- Do check voltage every time and adjust step by step
- Big jump in voltage when increase from +96 to +97.
- Core Voltage Boost are made available just in case, DO NOT ENABLE, unless +222 is not enough for you.
- Voltage measurement read up to 3.30v, which is pretty much adequate, not to mention we can hardly use up to 2.0v.
Tip:
As I have mentioned it is control in offset basic, which mean, you can control up to 6 graphics card, assume core voltage vmodded only for each card, or 3 cards with both Core voltage and Memory voltage vmodded.
Introduction 
AMD Zacate was already in the market for quite sometimes. This platform is meant to support the system that runs with low power consumption. There is a trade-off for a low power system, the performance. You have to sacrifice the system performance in order to get a low power consumption system. This system is not meant for heavy tasking user but more to light casual use. Because this system consumes very less power, it is ideal for downloading and torrenting system. The processor is equipped with a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) AMD Radeon HD6310. The GPU is quite weak for a 3D application like gaming, but the GPU supports Universal Video Decoder (UVD) technology. This technology makes the High Definition video playback smooth. This means that this system also suitable for a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC)
Click here is the official link for the mainboard