Functional possibilities of motherboards are not 100% dependent on their dimensions, as it was considered in earlier times. Quite the contrary, nowadays it's feasible to complement a high-performance system of compact dimensions. In this light, the majority of motherboard designers replenish their lineup of products with models of mATX format to propose efficiency and ergonomics simultaneously. Asus can boast a number of motherboard of various form-factors, and mATX is not an exclusion. Its latest model P8Z77M-Pro is capable to support all up-dated technologies, including multi-graphics (3-Way CrossFire, SLI, and Lucid Virtu MVP).



General Peculiarities


Asus P8Z77M-Pro is developed in mATX form factor. The predominant color gamut includes brown, blue and black tints. Capacitor fins have got composite gamut of silver-blue tints. The power is enabled via the main 24-contact ATX socket, and an additional 8-contact one. Such combination is basically applied in full-size …

I-O Data, a well-known Japanese developer of top-tier peripheral and interface products, is going to introduce its new SSD series, codenamed SSDN-3V. The newbies will become available in the home market already at the end of the current month. The series involves three models of 60 GB (SSDN-3V60), 120 GB(SSDN-3V120), and 240 GB (SSDN-3V240) capacities. All the models are thought to support SATA 6 Gb/sec interface.



Solid-state drives from I-O Data are based on SandForce/LSI SF-2281 controller and employ NAND flash-memory, designed under 24 nm technological process. SSDs feature 7 mm case depth, but the availability of a dedicated adapter promotes for their installation into a standard 9.5 mm drive bay.


In regard to performance, SSDN-V3 drives offer up to 306 MB/sec speed on consecutive reading operations and up to 186 MB/sec on consecutive writing operations.


Moreover, the manufacturer will deliver the products in a package with a special adapter for the connection …

Sapphire Technology, a renowned supplier of graphics solutions, has added an alternative model of AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition to its graphics cards model line. The new model is primarily notable by the integration of a two-slot Dual-X cooler that facilitated the process of entitling: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Dual-X Edition. This cooler consists of a voluminous aluminum heatsink, a couple of large fans, and a few copper heat pipes which are covered by a plastic lid.



Graphics card Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Dual-X Edition is based on Pitcairn chip with 1280 current processors; it is developed under 28 nm technological process and Graphics Core Next architecture. The core is able to operate at the nominal 1000 MHz frequency. Blue printed circuit board is the heart of the adapter. PCB is designed particularly for PCI-e 3.0 x16 bus and houses 2GB of GDDR5 memory with 256-bit interface. The memory is capable to achieve the clock frequency of 4800 MHz.


To continue, the …