Sapphire Unveils its Socket LGA1150 Motherboards

@ 2013/06/05
Sapphire unveiled its first socket LGA1150 motherboards, designed for 4th generation Core "Haswell" processors, although they're not completely out of the pipeline, and Sapphire is yet to finalize heatsink designs. Among the boards shown at Computex are the micro-ATX Pure Platinum Z87M-PR, and the ATX Pure Platinum Z87A-MA, both of which offer a pretty mid-range feature-set. The Z87M-PR gives you a 5-phase VRM that powers the CPU, four DDR3 DIMM slots, a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16, and one each of mPCIe, PCIe 2.0 x1, and legacy PCI. The board offers four each of SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0/1.1 ports, DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI display outputs, gigabit Ethernet, and 8-channel HD audio.

The Z87A-MA, on the other hand, offers the same CPU VRM as its little sibling, one PCI-Express 3.0 x16, a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical gen 2.0 x4, wired to the PCH), two PCI-Express 2.0 x1, and two legacy PCI. You get six each of SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 ports, but oddly enough, the rest of the connectivity is a notch worse. 8-channel HD audio makes way for 6-channel. Sapphire's other motherboards are more interesting finds, but more on that later.

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