Computex 2011 - X79 motherboards

[Jamesrt2004]

D= epic.. when are these meant to be out?

[STaRGaZeR]

Huge ass socket we have right there.

[WhiteFireDragon]

Gimme 8 DIMM slots, WTF was Intel thinking when they implemented quad channel and only added 4? May as well go back to dual channel if they did that. Hopefully higher tier motherboards will feature 8, but at the moment, I'm not impressed, apart from having 14 SATA which is nice.

ya they are SOO crazy to only put 4 slots right? but seriously, how many people would actually fill all 8 slots? even if you fill all 8 with 1gb sticks, 8gb of system memory is way overkill for most systems. and with cheaper high density memory sticks nowadays, it's almost foolish to put 8 slots instead of 4.

[Cooper]

Single chip chipset ? Does that mean CPU will have 32x pci-e lanes ?

[PatRaceTin]

That look ugly

[Gilgamesh]

Foxconn Quantum Force is back with X79

[sholvaco]

Nice beefy PWM on the QF board.

Also the mounting holes mid board raise hope for a big ass sink that extends from SB all the way to the socket. Remember guys: in these outward appearance obsessed times form should over take priority over function.

[Iconyu]

Single chip chipset ? Does that mean CPU will have 32x pci-e lanes ?

Previous slides suggest 40 lanes, but with some being dedicated for the SATA ports I'm not sure if those lanes come out of the 40 3.0 lanes or if they have added extra just for that task.

[HKPolice]

I'm surprised no one has complained about airflow issues with this design. The mosfets delivering power to the CPU will roast because airflow is blocked by TWO towers of dimms. Same with using twin towered high end heatsinks like the Noctua D14 or Thermalright Silver arrow, how the hell do you expect to mount the fans while using high heatsink dimms???

This could all be solved if they turned the whole socket and design counter clockwise by 90 degrees. The mosfets will get plenty of exhaust air from the heatsink and there won't be any clearance issues with the dimms.

I realize that Intel probably designed the pin out of the socket this way with all the PCIe pins clustered at the bottom for shorter traces. But I really hope someone breaks away from this stupid "reference" design.

[DarthShader]

I'm surprised no one has complained about airflow issues with this design. The mosfets delivering power to the CPU will roast because airflow is blocked by TWO towers of dimms. Same with using twin towered high end heatsinks like the Noctua D14n or Thermalright Silver arrow, how the hell do you expect to mount the fans while using high heatsink dimms???

This.

Looks like Narrow CPU Coolers + top intake/outake fans or maybe Raven3-like designs will be a hit since Q4.

[Darakian]

That socket looks down right terrifying. I want one!

[HKPolice]

I have a feeling Ivy Bridge will kill Sandy Bridge-E in games and definitely in raw clockspeed. Probably going to skip this platform just because of the stupid dimm and mosfet layout.

[PatRaceTin]

would it use same heatsink/wateblock backplate as 1366?

[FISKER_Q]

What, no Mini-ITX boards?

A HPTX(If they can't manage EATX) board with 8 Memory Slots could be interesting.

[noobzed]

what beast of socket, s1155 seem to be for kids near this :o

[Origin_Unknown]

on the original image, right under the 24pin atx power connector, what are those two weird looking rectangular things?

[radaja]

so from the looks of it socket 2011 has a built in cpu mounting plate/backplate

[Mats]

These must be the low-mid range of X79 boards, just wait for EATX or bigger for decent layouts.
I guess the tracing for 4 channel RAM needs that kind of layout on a regular ATX, it's not like they WANT it to be like that.

Since there are 1155 EATX boards, then we will of course see that form factor for X79 as well, just wait and see..

[XRL8]

Any word on pricing ? Im interested in this, however i have a feeling Intel is not going to be only expensive as x58 was.I kinda regret i didnt get x58 at the start :-/.

[Iconyu]

I have a feeling Ivy Bridge will kill Sandy Bridge-E in games and definitely in raw clockspeed. Probably going to skip this platform just because of the stupid dimm and mosfet layout.

Highly unlikely, with no Ivy bridge EE on the board Intel will just stick on a locked top multiplier and have done with. As for games, without a clock advantage, how exactly is Ivy bridge going to beat a CPU with more cache same architecture and twice the memory bandwidth?

Dimm layout isn't that big a issue, it's just the easiest way to have all the traces a similar length. Anyway on a platform that high end you'd probably have a case with a top mounted fan anyway.

[MadHacker]

Gimme 8 DIMM slots, WTF was Intel thinking when they implemented quad channel and only added 4? May as well go back to dual channel if they did that. Hopefully higher tier motherboards will feature 8, but at the moment, I'm not impressed, apart from having 14 SATA which is nice.

i hope so as well...
curretnly have 12 GB of ram and have to keep shutting down some of my VM machines so i don't run out.
was hoping to see some boards with 8 DIMM slots as well.

also i wonder how long it will take them before some company makes an SR2 like board for this CPU

[HKPolice]

Highly unlikely, with no Ivy bridge EE on the board Intel will just stick on a locked top multiplier and have done with. As for games, without a clock advantage, how exactly is Ivy bridge going to beat a CPU with more cache same architecture and twice the memory bandwidth?

Dimm layout isn't that big a issue, it's just the easiest way to have all the traces a similar length. Anyway on a platform that high end you'd probably have a case with a top mounted fan anyway.

1) Ivy bridge will replace all current Sandy bridge models including the UNLOCKED i7 2600K so 5Ghz+ on air will just be a starting OC point, probably more like 5.5Ghz because of 22nm trigate transistors.

2) Memory bandwidth does NOT matter much in games, check any Nehalem i7 review where they test dual channel vs triple for games.

[Iconyu]

1) Ivy bridge will replace all current Sandy bridge models including the UNLOCKED i7 2600K so 5Ghz+ on air will just be a starting OC point, probably more like 5.5Ghz because of 22nm trigate transistors.

2) Memory bandwidth does NOT matter much in games, check any Nehalem i7 review where they test dual channel vs triple for games.

Anyone who actually paid attention to Sandy Bridge would KNOW that the 2600k only has 57x as top multiplier. And that memory bandwidth + PCI-E 3.0 would probably need a much more demanding title than the games in those reviews. Just saying it isn't needed because games don't push a system enough is like saying you don't need fast hard drives because games have loading screens.

[George_o/c]

Guys did you check out the dimensions of these chips? They are f-ing huge

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

LGA 2011 + HIgh ram sticks = no cpu cooler fitting (that's of any decent size).

Looks like this is a WCing only platform.

Edit:

I wonder how OCing will be with 4 sticks. We need a little voltage bump w/ 4 sticks now on 1155. This might damper OCs JUST a tad. I bet WRs will be with 1 or 2 sticks like normal.