First Looks: ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional

[siopao1984]

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Front Box - The use of Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel's likeness and trademarks reveal ASRock's target buyers for the board - gamers with wads of cash.

Rear Box View: A cluttered feature listing full of marketing hyperboles

The Fatal1ty Z77 Professional is a stunning beauty. Decked out in a black and red colour theme (hmm... familar) together with gold capacitors, most neutral observers will buy this based on its looks already. This board also features an incredible amount of components and meticulous engineering, which we will detail in the next few sections.

Back of board - this is one of the few boards that we see with I/Cs sticking at the back, which shows how packed the PCB is. You can also see that out of the three "full-length" PCIe x16 slots in the previous picture, only the first slot is electrically capable of x16 operation while the second and third slot have only x8 and x4 soldering points respectively. This is not a surprise as Socket 1155 processors have 20 native PCIe signal lanes, and three/four-way multi-GPU enthusiasts will be better off going with X79/Socket 2011 platform instead.

At the I/O panel, we get an orgy of USB ports (twelve in total of which six are USB 3.0). The veritable PS/2 port also makes an appearance, meant for the OCD benchmarker wanting to not waste precious cpu cycles on USB polling. There is also twin Gigabit LAN ports, IEEE1394, eSATA and 7.1 audio. For IGP display, we have a space saving HDMI and DisplayPort configuration.

Read more: First Looks: ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional by VR-Zone.com

[siopao1984]

Here at the CPU socket area, there is an over-engineered 16 power phases surrounding the LGA1155 socket which are cooled by heatpiped heatsinks (low profile to avoid any HSF installation problems). It is worth nothing that the first PCIe x1 slot practically cannot be used as it is clearly blocked. The same heatsink obstruction might also be a problem with the adjacent PCIe x16 slot if there is a blackplate on the installed video card.



Down at the memory slots we have the other eight phases for power delivery to the DIMMs. We were surprised to see the decadent ATA133 IDE connector which have disappeared altogether on recent boards already.



There are a plentiful 10 right angled SATA ports (six are SATA 3.0) for the storage aficionados, which should be handy during file swapping sessions at lan parties. The (overclocker) mandatory PORT-80 diagnostic LED and onboard power/reset buttons are present as well.



ASRock engineers have been sensible here, putting three slots between the first two PCIe x16 slots so that SLi/CrossFireX setups get enough airflow. There is also the cheeky inclusion of the floppy connector, which practically have no use in modern computing experiences.



PLX 8608 switch chip to provide more lanes for the extra host controllers.



ASMedia ASM1061 for two additional 6Gb/s SATA ports



ASMedia ASM1083 PCIe to PCI bridge chip



For audio, we get the uninspiring Realtek ALC898 8-channel codec.



Like on previous boards, ASRock has opted to use Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controllers, which is decent.



ASMedia ASM1442T TMDS level shift IC for the onboard HDMI/DVI outputs



The VIA VT6330 is an interesting embedded solution, integrating both the mutually exclusive IEEE 1394a and PATA host controller.



EtronTech EJ188H's four USB 3.0 outputs compliments the other two direct from the Z77 PCH.



Stay tuned for our full review of the ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional!

[lloyd_joy]

nindot pud ni na mobo... priced at 9K php equivalent (pinaka barato) then 13K php ang pinakamahal na price dri... pila kaha ni dha sa atoa?

[StingerRay]

OT:

Boss siopao1984, it seems your very updated posting latest news on computer hardwares, peripherals, etc. in this computer hardware section, why not create a composed thread about this news/updates? Friendly suggestion lang, sir. I'm always informed about your latest posts here in this section.

OnT:

Nice looking motherboard from Asrock with their "Fatal1ty" series.

[wire]

...Out nani sa market sa Cebu bro?

Front Box - The use of Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel's likeness and trademarks reveal ASRock's target buyers for the board - gamers with wads of cash.

Rear Box View: A cluttered feature listing full of marketing hyperboles

The Fatal1ty Z77 Professional is a stunning beauty. Decked out in a black and red colour theme (hmm... familar) together with gold capacitors, most neutral observers will buy this based on its looks already. This board also features an incredible amount of components and meticulous engineering, which we will detail in the next few sections.

Back of board - this is one of the few boards that we see with I/Cs sticking at the back, which shows how packed the PCB is. You can also see that out of the three "full-length" PCIe x16 slots in the previous picture, only the first slot is electrically capable of x16 operation while the second and third slot have only x8 and x4 soldering points respectively. This is not a surprise as Socket 1155 processors have 20 native PCIe signal lanes, and three/four-way multi-GPU enthusiasts will be better off going with X79/Socket 2011 platform instead.

At the I/O panel, we get an orgy of USB ports (twelve in total of which six are USB 3.0). The veritable PS/2 port also makes an appearance, meant for the OCD benchmarker wanting to not waste precious cpu cycles on USB polling. There is also twin Gigabit LAN ports, IEEE1394, eSATA and 7.1 audio. For IGP display, we have a space saving HDMI and DisplayPort configuration.

Read more: First Looks: ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional by VR-Zone.com

[archt_vin]

mo release sad ta ug matx ang fatality sa?..hehehe

[ryan101@yahoo.com]

maglibog nalang ta ane asay nindot nya pila ka months naa nasad nindot

[lloyd_joy]

before ma release ang Haswell, for sure, mag release napud ug lain Fata1ity series w/ a new chip set...

[bim27142]

maglibog nalang ta ane asay nindot nya pila ka months naa nasad nindot

mao jud bro, inani gyud ning bisyuha?! hahaha! pero ako, d na ko mo hulat og haswell oi, basta june or july, ivy bridge na jud ko... tigum2x lang sa ko para kausahon nalang og palit puhon, hehehe...