After a long delay and during Last year November 2010, the PCI Special Interest Group officially publishes the finalized PCI Express 3.0 specification to its members to build devices based on this new version of PCI Express.

So, what is PCI Express 3.0 and what's the differ of PCI Express 2.x? take a look below


From the table above, we can see that the bandwidth of PCI-Express 3.0 is doubled compared PCI Express 2.x. Few days ago news of AMD new coming HD7000 series GPU will PCI-E 3.0 compliant; while Intel announce Ivy bridge will be support PCIE3.0 , does that mean it's the new era for computer industry already?

Anyhow, today we're here to preview Malaysia very first PCIE 3.0 motherboard, ASROCK Z68 EXTREME 4 GEN3


The Packaging with handle. Standard packaging size



Rear of the packaging



Opening the box, you'll see the accessories enclosed



Sata 3.0 rated Cables. Well at least you won't need to worry data loss



A High speed USB 3.0 connectors bracket for your 2.5" Floppy drive bay



The overall look of the motherboard. It's full of Black with Gold colors Capacitor. Provided a premium Look

This post has been edited by storm88: Jul 22 2011, 05:50 PM

PCIE 3.0 Slot exits!


The south bridge cooler with a V8 wording on it. Perhaps a V8 Engine inside?



The Cool Gold color capacitors and it's digital PWM 8 + V Phase



Types of features ready inside the product



4 x SATA2; 4 x SATA3

This post has been edited by storm88: Jul 22 2011, 06:46 PM

ASMedia ASM1083 Single Chip Solution to bridge SuperSpeed USB3.0, High Speed USB2.0 and SATA 6.0/3.0 Gbps with integrated CPU and embedded RAM


PLX Chip. It's widely used to distribute PCIe lanes more effectively. attached picture shows the difference "WITH" or "WITHOUT" PLX chip.

VS Motherboard without PLX chip



Rear connectors

This post has been edited by storm88: Jul 22 2011, 06:04 PM

Since this is only a simple product review, so I won't touch about the Bios and other features of the product today.

Oh by the way, the most important part of this review, is the specification of the product. So here we go:

# Premium Gold Caps (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors
# Digi Power, Advanced V8 + 4 Power Phase Design
# 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 Slots, 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 Slot, (3-Way CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® SLI™ Ready)
# Supports Intel® HD Graphics Built-in Visuals
# Dr. Debug, Smart Switch Design: Power/Reset/Clear CMOS Switch with LED
# Support Intel® Smart Response, Lucid Virtu Switchable Graphics
# Supports ASRock XFast USB, XFast LAN Technologies
# Supports ASRock On/Off Play, Graphical UEFI, ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility (AXTU)
# Combo Cooler Option (C.C.O.)
# 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), Supports THX TruStudio™

Thank you for viewing and hope you all have a nice day!

This post has been edited by storm88: Jul 22 2011, 05:59 PM

Yes. by referring to PCISIG, PCIE 3 is backward compatible. Btw Pricing of this product is sub RM700

Yes you are right. Intel announced PCI-E 3.0 will be supported only by IB atm.

Besides of PCI-E 3.0 features in this Gen 3 motherboard, it does has other features as well

This board is estimated at RM660+/-

abit curious, how do you really know the quality is better by just looking at it?

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Added on November 13, 2011, 9:30 amDon't know what you try to describe here...

bro Riddhy asks if PCIE 3.0 able to provide 75watts as PCIE 2.x does...

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Added on November 13, 2011, 9:31 amSo far i know it does provide 75Watts. But need to be double confirm with HD7000 cards when released

This post has been edited by storm88: Nov 13 2011, 09:31 AM