MSI’s latest strategy to boost sales is to leverage Intel’s hot new Optane SSD. MSI’s Arsenal Gaming motherboards: Z270 Tomahawk Opt Boost, B250M Bazooka Ops Boost, and the recently released B250M Pro Opt Boost-will all come with a 16GB Intel Optane SSD. All three motherboards are members of MSI’s prestigious gaming series with features such as M.2 slot, military-grade components, and PCIe 3.1 Gen2 support.

The included Optane SSD is a $50 value. Due to its rather low capacity, it’s primarily intended for use as a caching drive. Only Intel’s Z200 series chipsets support this technology, and a BIOS update to [...]

Last week, AMD launched their highly anticipated Ryzen CPUs to huge fanfare and for the most part, the CPU has lived up to its expectations. While there is still quite a bit of controversy over whether or not it’s a strong CPU for gamers, other applications that are highly multi-threaded such as video editing or 3D modeling show Ryzen to be very clearly competitive against its Intel counterparts.

As such, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have quickly “Ryzen” to the best seller lists of numerous vendors only to have dropped in the following days [...]

As expected, more leaks are springing as AMD gets closer to the Ryzen CPU launch.

Recently, Sean from YouTube channel KWASTEK got his hands on an early sample of the new ASUS Crosshair VI Hero AM4 motherboard designed for the upcoming Ryzen CPU and has released the first unboxing and first look of the board.

The Crosshair VI Hero is expected to be ASUS’s most premium motherboard for the AMD X370 platform and has been a long time coming. Aesthetically, it’s a very beautiful motherboard. Featuring a fully blacked out PCB, the board also includes some beautiful new heatsinks with a new interlacing stripe design along with the massive cover bearing the [...]

After a recent leak of almost all the motherboards expected to be coming down the pipeline, BIOSTAR recently launched their entire lineup of AM4 motherboards in anticipation for the AMD Ryzen CPU launch coming within the next few weeks.

At launch, BIOSTAR will introduce three X370 chipset based motherboards along with two X350 chipset based motherboards. All motherboards will feature BIOSTAR’s 2nd Generation RACING features including Digital Power+ digital power controllers, M.2 cooling heatsink, Lightning Charger, Fly.net QoS software, VIVID LED Armor, and 5050 LED headers for RGB lighting enthusiasts.

And without further ado, here they [...]

In the latest round of leaks, stock images of AM4 motherboards and their packaging has been revealed for ASUS, Gigabyte, Biostar and ASRock. These are likely images being sent to retailers to prepare for the upcoming AMD Ryzen CPU launch in a few weeks.

The motherboards include the ASUS PRIME X370 PRO, ASUS Crosshair VI Hero, ASRock AB350 Gaming K4, ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac, Gigabyte AORUS AX-370 Gaming 5, BIOSTAR X370 GT7, BIOSTAR X370 GT5, BIOSTAR B350 GT5 and BIOSTAR B350 GT3.

Last week at CES, MSI displayed their new batch of PC hardware for 2017. The new roster highlights include AMD Ryzen X370 motherboards and an external graphics dock.

With Kaby Lake’s launch, MSI had a full range of Z270 motherboards are also ready and on display. At the time of writing, MSI has an huge lineup of 30 boards scattered in 4 different segments.

The MSI Z270 M7 includes Boost Audio 4 Pro which MSI says will provide gamers a premium audio experience for a “competitive edge”. To fit the RGB theme of 2016, all heatsinks and covers are fitted with RGB Mystic Light which can be easily controlled via [...]

At CES 2017 we had the chance to stop by EVGA, which had a huge lineup of new products including the all-new iCX cooled GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards, Intel Z270 motherboards, a brand new lineup of budget-minded B3 power supplies, and the finished version of the quick disconnect CLC coolers we saw back at Computex last year.

Starting off our tour we had the chance to take a look EVGA’s brand new “iCX” cooled graphics cards which are set to replace the ACX 3.0 cooled cards which make up the majority of their current GeForce 10-series lineup. The new [...]

Continuing our coverage of CES 2017, we arrive at Zotac, a company best known for manufacturing NVIDIA graphics cards. While the company did have the full range of GTX 10 series cards on display, including their recently announced GTX 1080 Mini, it was clear that Zotac has another passion: making powerful miniature PCs.

Starting with the slew of mini PCs, the first of which was the ZBOX C1549 Nano, a small fanless design which features a 7th generation Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics. This passively-cooled powerhouse is specifically tailored to HTPC usage with its completely silent operation. However, we did see a demo with a [...]

At AMDs press event, AMD displayed a slew of motherboards based on their upcoming X370, B350 and A320 chipsets which will support AMD’s upcoming Ryzen CPUs. The motherboards on display include well known manufacturers including Asrock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI, and more.

AMD’s flagship chipset is the X370 chipset which will support overclocking and dual GPU configurations. AMD’s new chipsets will also support NVMe, M.2 SATA devices, USB 3.1 Gen 1/Gen 2 and PCI-E 3.0. This finally puts AMD motherboards on the a more level playing field in comparison to Intel’s 200 series chipset.

Currently no additional information was provided about [...]

According to a recent announcement, ASUS is launching BIOS updates for their entire lineup of Socket 1151 based motherboards to support Intel’s upcoming 7th Generation Core processors, codename Kaby Lake. Owners of ASUS Z170, H170, B150, and H110 motherboards will be able to find BIOS updates for their respective motherboards directly through the ASUS Support website.

Intel’s upcoming 7th Generation Core Processors for desktop systems are expected to launch in January following Kaby Lake’s launch on notebooks by the end of this year. According to recent leaked performance figures, the Kaby Lake based Intel Core i7-7700K could offer at least 15% or [...]