http://www.tweaktown.com Intel Z77 coverage keeps on rolling in and this time we give you a look at three upcoming ASUS boards based on the upcoming Ivy Bridge chipset. Once again we were told not to say "Ivy Bridge" by ASUS, but surely by now you all know exactly what we are working with here, so we just decided to say it.
As you can see in the video above, ASUS has many bases covered with a full line-up of Z77 boards that support the third generation Core processors based on a 28nm architecture including ones for those who want it all, those who are into gaming (for small systems) and those who are interesting in impressive cooling performance.
We'll start off with the Sabertooth Z77 which is built for consumer workstation level performance. The big thing with this board is that it includes Thermal Armor which is an original ASUS invention to bring a new way to cool your motherboard. The cooling assembly is split into two cooling zones with one covering the northern part of the board and the other the southern part of the board. Two fans are included in the package with are optional to be installed - meaning, the board doesn't really active fan cooling, but if you add the fans in, ASUS measured up to a 10 degree Celsius drop in temperature on some areas of the board.
There are also several drilled holes on the board which allow for improved air ventilation over previous generation Thermal Armor designs to help cool some of the back areas of the board. Additionally this time around the Thermal Armor has included plastic covers for the PCI Express expansion slots as well as memory DIMM slots to help protect the slots from dust and so on. It's also appealing to the eye to cover up more of the board to go with the Thermal Armor cover cooling assembly theme.
Then we move onto the Maximus V Gene (the Formula will come onto the market about one month after the Gene) which is part of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) series of course catered right to gamers who want to build a small yet powerful system based on ...
