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KitGuru is busy trawling the stands at CEBIT in Hannover, Germany. Today we were able to get some time at the ASROCK stand – they were keen to show us their new ASROCK X99E-ITX/AC motherboard.
This new Mini ITX board is built to very high standards, featuring ASROCK Super Alloy with Premium 60A Power Chokes, Premium Memory Alloy Chokes and Fairchild Dual Cool DRMOS. They have opted to incorporate Platinum Nichicon 12k capacitors and to improve aesthetics, they have built it on a Sapphire Black PCB. Power is sophisticated with Digi Power and 6 Power Phase delivery.
The board fully supports Intel Core i7 and Xeon 18 Core Processors for the 2011-3 Socket. It also supports DDR4 memory running at 3000+ (OC), with a 15u Gold Contact in the DIMM Slots. The audio side of the board offers 7.1 CH Audio with Content Protection running via a Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec. There is also support for DTS Connect.
Onboard ports include Dual Gigabit LAN with Teaming Functionality. There are 6 SATA 3 ports, 1eSATA port, 1 SATA Express connector, 1 Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen 3 x 4 & Sata 3.
Additionally there is support for 2 USB 3.1 connectors which run at 10Gb/s, with another 6 USB 3.0 ports – 2 on the front and 4 on the rear. To round out USB support there are a further 4 USB 2.0 ports, with 2 at the front and 2 at the rear.
Those of you focusing on wireless support will be pleased to hear that ASROCK haver included a WLAN 1*2TR2R Dual Band 802.11AC WiFi + BT v4.0 Module, 1 x ASRock WiFi 2.4/5GHZ Antenna.
Above Mike Yang from ASROCK highlights the new USB 3.1 port – which will be featuring on many of the their new boards. Be sure to check back on KitGuru's coverage of USB 3.1 performance over the previous month if you have yet to read up on the technology.
Above Peter Fest from ASROCK showcasing new USB 3.1 solutions. If you don't want to buy a new motherboard just for USB 3.1 support, then ASROCK will be selling add in cards to support your current motherboard. More details as we get them.
KitGuru says: We have no pricing yet for X99E-ITX/ac board but it looks to be one targeting a select audience who need a fully featured Mini ITX board to handle some serious CPU intensive duties.
