There's going to be no shortage of P55 motherboards when Intel's Lynnfield-based Core i5 and Core i7 processors show up early next month.
We've already seen ASUS' P5P55D EVO, P7P55D DELUXE and Maximus III Gene, as well as GIGABYTE's P55M-UD4 and MSI's P55-GD65. However, if you just can't make up your mind, here's another contender to add to your list from Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn:
It's called the Inferno Katana, and it'll be the latest addition to Foxconn's high-end Quantum Force range. The board makes use of Intel's P55 chipset and sports an LGA1156 socket awaiting the upcoming Intel Core i5 750, Core i7 870, and Core i7 860 processors.
Foxconn's board is both ATI CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI certified, and two of the three PCIe x16 slots can be configured as x8 lanes in a dual-GPU arrangement. Elsewhere, there are dual-channel DDR3 memory slots officially supporting surprisingly-limited speeds of up to 1,800MHz.
The board looks about as menacing as they come, and there's plenty of overclocker-friendly features including Foxconn's i-Tweaker, Green Efficient Power control and Fuzzy Equaliser. The latter, in case you were wondering, is a series of LED lights displaying PWM loading status. If you like flashing lights, you'll also enjoy Foxconn's Core Nerve - that's an LED that'll blink in relation to system load.
No details on pricing yet, but expect the board to land early next month alongside Intel's new processors. Need more detail? Check out Foxconn's complete specification below.
| Processor: | Intel® Core™ i7,Core™ i5 processors, Socket LGA1156 |
| Chipset: | Intel® P55 |
| Memory: | Dual channel DDR3 1800(oc)/1600(oc)/1333 x 4 DIMMs, Max. 16GB |
| VGA on Die: | Discreted |
| Expansion Slots: | 3* PCIe2.0 x16, 2* PCIe2.0 x1, 1* PCI |
| IDE: | 1*ATA133 |
| Serial ATA(SATA)/RAID: | 6* SATAII + 2*eSATA w / RAID 0, 1, 5, 10; Intel® Matrix storage technology |
| Audio: | 7.1 channel HDA support Dolby & DTS Surround sound technology |
| LAN: | Gigabit Lan |
| IEEE1394: | 2*IEEE 1394a |
| Back Panel I/O Ports: | 1 x PS/2 keyboard port 1 x S/PDIF Coaxial port 1 x S/PDIF Optical port 2 x eSATA ports 1 x Clear CMOS Button 1 x Audio jack supports 6 jacks 1 x RJ45 LAN port 8 x USB 2.0 ports 1 x IEEE 1394a port |
| Internal I/O Connectors: | 1 x ATX 24-Pin power connector 1 x 8-Pin ATX 12V power connector 1 x 4-Pin CPU Fan connector 5 x 3-Pin System Fan connectors 3 x Onboard On/Off/CCMOS/Force Reset buttons 1 x S/PDIF out header 1 x Onboard power_LED 1 x IDE connector 2 x USB 2.0 connectors support additional 4 ports 6 x SATAII connectors 1 x Front Audio Header 1 x Front Panel header 1 x Speaker header 1 x CD-in connector 1 x IEEE 1394a header |
| BIOS Features: | 8Mb flash EEPROM w/ LAN boot PnP, ACPI, WfM, DMI |
| Support CD: | Drivers, Adobe Reader, SuperUtilities, Norton Internet Security |
| Standards/Manageability: | PCI 2.3, USB2.0, DMI 2.5 |
| Form Factor: | ATX (12" x 9.6") |
