Motherboards based on Intel Z77 chip have been lately given much attention, to the detriment of products featuring AMD solutions. In fact, motherboards with AMD chips are in abundance in the market, providing a competitive conditions for the manufacturers and plentiful offers for potential consumers. Asus developed a lot of boards with Intel Z77 chip, but it also boasts the products, like Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0, based on AMD 990FX chip for AM3+ socket. This model is an apt sample of performance, resources and design.



Integration


Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 is developed in ATX form-factor and features 305x244 mm dimensions. The motherboard accommodates five sockets for the connection of fans and large heatsinks which manage heat quite efficiently; heatsinks located on the northbridge and CPU power converter are joined by a heat pipe. There is one peculiar feature pertained to the implemented heatsinks: each of them is notable by an individual fixture type. The reverse side of the …

On the threshold of the new AMD HEDT platform (holding Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and Socket TR4 motherboards) release, the Swiss Arctic Cooling company published a list of cooling systems, compatible with a new socket.



As it turned out, despite a wide range of coolers available, only three models of maintenance-free water cooling systems will get the Socket TR4 platform support. Those are Liquid Freezer 360, Liquid Freezer 240 and Liquid Freezer 120. The first two of them can draw heat away from processors with TDP not higher than 300 W, and the third sample is able to chill 250 W CPUs.


By the way, the rated AMD Ryzen Threadripper chips thermal envelope is to get close to 180 W. Thus, only three above-mentioned Arctic Cooling water cooling systems can handle such a high TDP value. One should also note that these processing units are distinguished due to a large heat transfer cover surface, which specifies new requirements for the CPU coolers baseplates.

Gigabyte is going to introduce one more entry-level graphics solution that corresponds to the updated Nvidia GeForce GT 640 series. Entitled Gigabyte GeForce GT 640 (GV-N640D5-2GI), the card employs GK107 GPU, running at 1046 MHz frequency instead of the preceding 900 MHz. The core, developed under 28 technological process, utilizes 384 CUDA cores.



It’s necessary to underline that the new-comer differs by the availability of 2 GB memory, whereas all etalon models take 1 GB only. Memory is represented by 64-bit GDDR5 chips that run at 5010 MHz effective frequency, if compared with 1800 MHz frequency that DDR3 modules demonstrate.


GV-N640D5-2GI comes with an improved design of PCB where a brand Ultra Durable 2 concept has been incorporated. This concept implies the employment of a high-quality hardware base, involving durable solid-state capacitors, transistors with low channel resistance RDS (on), and ferrite throttles with reduced power loss. Traditionally, the model …