This mainboard has unprecedentedly rich functionality, including unique support for a large number of SATA drives. Besides, it has a number of other advantages and very few drawbacks with one of them standing out among the rest.

By combining their energy-efficient Celeron 847 processor with an NM70 chipset Intel created a new desktop platform for SFF PC, which may easily push Atom and Brazos of the pedestal. Our today’s test session will show if the new product with Core microarchitecture is capable of competing against specialty energy-efficient and inexpensive processors.

After the launch of the Intel Z77 chipset it became possible to deliver the functionality of a large computer system in Mini-ITX form-factor. Today we are going to talk about six mainboards that could be used as a basis for a compact gaming or overclocking system. These will be the products from ASRock, Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte MSI and Zotac.

MSI mainboards look great, have very convenient layout and use only high-quality components. These boards are energy-efficient, fast and work well with default settings. However, there are quite a few things in their BIOS that could use some extra work and the boards do not keep the power-saving technologies up and running during overclocking. Everything we have just said is true for the main hero of our today’s review.

This mainboard from ASRock has almost the same accessories bundle, design and technical specifications as other top Socket FM2 mainboards out there. Moreover, it can boast a variety of unique advantages that its competitors do not have. Read our review for details!

This mainboard looks great, is convenient to work with, offers rich functionality and high performance. However, its price is pretty high and the board is not very energy-efficient. It does have other advantages and a few other drawbacks, which we will unveil in the following review.

Today we will talk about the functionality of the mainboard and try to find out why not very fast AMD Trinity processors consume so much power after all. Which of the system components have the most serious effect on the performance and power consumption? Computing cores, Graphics or memory – what must be overclocked and why should be left alone in the nominal mode?

Intel decided to give it a shot in the ultra-compact desktop systems market. And they immediately came up with a unique product: a miniature system case only 12x11x4 cm in size based on Core i3 processor. It boasts a truly impressive combination of features, but does it make practical sense to give us a large desktop box in favor of a tiny guy like that?

The major peculiarity of this mainboard is that unlike most other boards out there, it doesn’t have any unnecessary features. No “excess” additional controllers, no buttons, no decorative plates, but everything necessary for efficient work is present. We could point out two or three things, but otherwise this mainboard has numerous great advantages, just like other ASRock products do.

This mainboard is a flagship product from ECS. It boasts extended functionality and a number of unique peculiarities. Our today’s review will discuss all the advantages or this product alongside with the challenges that the users may face if they decide on this “golden” board.

This mainboard boasts a lot of advantages. Some are typical of all Micro-Star’s mainboards, some are unique for this particular model. However, it is also kind of tricky to work with and may require a good deal of patience on your part.

This mainboard has a ton of peculiarities and two major features distinguishing it from the others. The first one is an extremely powerful voltage regulator circuitry with 32 phases for the processor alone. The second one is a special individual graphics card slot, which will ensure that your single graphics card works at the highest speed possible, even though this mainboard is originally designed for multi-card graphics configurations.

This mainboard is based on Intel Z77 Express and offers extensive networking and wireless functionality. It comes with a pre-installed mSATA drive and supports Thunderbolt. This is a very high-end model for those users who need maximum functionality immediately.

This product is based on Intel Z77 Express chipset and its functionality is significantly expanded due to a large number of onboard controllers. This mainboard belongs to the “Republic of Gamers” series and therefore supports a lot of additional features and technologies. However, we uncovered some minor issues, which, unfortunately, seem to be a little too numerous for a mainboard of this rank.

The long list of various peculiarities and features of this mainboard should make overclocking and performance optimization very easy. Free from any major issues, this award-winning product is definitely worth your attention.

This mainboard could easily be based on Intel Z75 Express; however, it is indeed built on Intel Z77 Express chipset, although it doesn’t use all of its functionality. There is nothing wrong about it, the mainboard is still exceptionally feature-rich, but its price is a little above the desired level.

Besides two distinct peculiarities mentioned in the title of this article, both LGA 1155 mainboards on Intel Z77 Express chipset have a lot of other indisputable advantages. For example, a discrete Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card bundled with the top model of the two. However, both of them cause one unique inconvenience: both mainboards turned out very sensitive to the type of the power supply unit.

The functionality of this mainboard has been significantly expanded with additional onboard controllers that provide the board with such features as wireless, FireWire, additional PCI-E slots, SATA and USB 3.0 ports. This board could become the base for a high-end computer system, although there are a few things to keep in mind while doing that.

It turned out to be a pretty good board, although its every advantage was counter-balanced with some sort of a concern or limitation. Find out what we are talking about from our new review.

These two mainboards are quite different, because they belong to the entry and the top segment of the Intel Z77 Express based series from Gigabyte. Yet, they both boast convenient layout, rich functionality, good overclocking potential and a number of proprietary technologies such as 3D Power, 3D BIOS and Ultra Durable 4.