Our main criticism with Biostar in the past is PCIe and feature placement.  On one series of products, Biostar has to a certain extent listened – the Z68 series have spaces between the PCIe x16 and space for a PCIe 1x and PCI.  However, the video outputs on the TZ68A+ are all spread out – meaning a lack of USB ports (two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0), only 2.1 channel audio, and no space for multiple LAN connections.  The SATA ports are also odd:

The TA990FXE however goes the other way – the video outputs are nicely positioned, as well as the SATA ports.  But the board offers four full length PCIe all next to each other and no other PCIe available if two dual slot GPUs are used.

Jetway has been producing motherboards for quite a while – if you’ve ever searched Newegg, you’ll find a few products in various categories and price points.  In terms of recent developments, Jetway has surprisingly produced a P67 and a Z68 board – what they deem their ‘Hummer’ series for their enthusiast consumers.  Two main features stand out when looking at the board – one if they have the rights to use the Hummer name in North America, and two that the memory compatibility is only to DDR3-1333 MHz.  You would expect higher-end products for enthusiasts to support the higher end memory speeds, but it’s up to the consumer to decide if they need it apparently. (Apologies for the images, Jetway decided to put a highly reflective glass in front of all their motherboards.)

Jetway have a series of Q67 products, mainly aimed at business and industry: one in particular has up to 10 COM ports possible – at the expense of only having one SATA port.  For AMD, they actually had a Hudson-D3 platform at the booth – again with the Hummer branding, and with 1333 MHz memory compatibility.  Though one thing I do like is that the extra power for the PCIe is at the bottom – as is becoming more common, the PSU is at the bottom of the case, so having this extra 4-pin power at the bottom of the board makes sense.

Giada is a division of the Shenzhen Jiehe Technology Development (JEHE) company based in China.  They have been selling in Asia for a while, and I noticed them starting to sell product over at Newegg for the US market.  So out of curiosity, I stopped by the booth at Computex to examine their range of products and a talk with the sales rep.  Giada’s current situation is to slowly move into various low-level motherboard segments within North America – currently they focus on mini-ITX platforms and the OTX form factor for all-in-one PCs (which is contrary to Intel trying to utilise thin mini-ITX).

For mini-ITX, Giada had an H55, H61 and H67 motherboards on show, all using one PCIe x16 and mini-PCIe.  At first glance the only thing that looks fairly odd is that the SATA ports are found just inside the DIMM slots, presumably making it hard to fit in cables if the slots are filled with memory and/or a large GPU is used.  An E350 Fusion board was also on the show, offering two mini-PCIe, using SO-DIMM memory and a rather odd SATA positioning as well.  I would also point out only one fan header on most of these models, suggesting that no serious coolers or fan controls would be present.

There was an ATX size Z68 on show, but apparently Giada has no intention of releasing this in North America just yet.  From the design, it doesn’t look too bad for the color scheme – there didn’t see much in the way of power delivery for overclocking however, and presumably no support for memory greater than 1333 MHz.

In addition to the P10 line, be quiet! will launch the Straight Power E9 series in September. These will also be modular PSUs, with 80 Plus Gold certification and prices similar to their predecessors. The most interesting feature could be their 135mm Silent Wings fan. Previously, they have had models with up to 120mm. be quiet! also presented a model called Efficient Power for the international market that will be less expensive than the E9 and P10 series.

What makes this mini-PC impressive is its size, a palm-sized chassis measuring 12 x 12 x 4cm, and its VIA Nano X2 dual-core CPU. These mini-PCs will be the ideal size for a home entertainment system, more so than most nettops, and are also great for small workspaces.

The dual-core CPUs in the new ZBOX is available at either 1.2 and 1.6GHz, plus it has native 64-bit software support, VT CPU virtualization technology, and VIA PadLock hardware security features. It’s also pin-to-pin compatible with VIA Nano, VIA C7, VIA C7-M and VIA Eden processors, facilitating easy upgrades of existing designs.

If this is just the mini-PC you’re been waiting for, keep on the lookout for these from the Taiwanese company because unfortunately, no information was given yet regarding pricing or availability.

VIA to Demo ZOTAC® ZBOX Mini-PC Featuring the VIA Nano X2 Dual-Core Processor at Computex
The ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PC offers high performance computing in an ultra compact chassis.

Taipei, Taiwan, 30 May, 2011 – VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced that it will demo the ultra compact ZOTAC ZBOX mini-PC featuring the VIA Nano X2 dual-core processor at the VIA Computex booth, TICC, room 201D.

Powered by the VIA Nano X2 dual-core processor, the ZOTAC ZBOX features a palm-sized chassis measuring just 12 x 12 x 4cm, making it an ideal solution for integration into a home entertainment system as well as space constrained workspaces.

“The ZOTAC ZBOX is a great example of the kinds of innovations in form factor design that are possible on our low power VIA Nano X2 dual-core processor platform,” said Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. “It provides an excellent solution for home and officer users seeking a premium computing experience in an ultra compact size.”
VIA Nano X2 Dual-Core Processor

VIA Nano X2 dual-core processors are available at speeds of 1.2 and 1.6GHz and are built using the latest 40nm fabrication process.

VIA Nano X2 processors come with native 64-bit software support, VT CPU virtualization technology, and VIA PadLockâ„¢ hardware security features and are also pin-to-pin compatible with VIA Nano, VIA C7, VIA C7-M and VIA Eden processors, facilitating easy upgrades of existing designs.

For images of the ZOTAC® ZBOX mini-PC, please click here.

For more details about the VIA Nano X2 Processor, please click here.

Come join VIA at Computex in TICC, room 201D, May 31st to June 4th, 2011.

About VIA Technologies, Inc.

VIA Technologies, Inc is the foremost fabless supplier of power efficient x86 processor platforms that are driving system innovation in the PC, client, ultra mobile and embedded markets. Combining energy-saving processors with digital media chipsets and advanced connectivity, multimedia and networking silicon enables a broad spectrum of computing and communication platforms, including its widely acclaimed ultra compact mainboards. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, VIA’s global network links the high tech centers of the US, Europe and Asia, and its customer base includes the world’s top OEMs and system integrators. www.via.com.tw
About ZOTAC International (MCO), Ltd.

ZOTAC® International is a part of PC Partner Ltd. Group. ZOTAC® is also one of the world’s largest channel manufacturers of graphics cards, motherboard and mini-PCs with over 10 years of quality manufacturing experience. The ZOTAC® philosophy is to deliver the latest products at competitive prices without sacrificing quality.

Introducing the Danshui Bay concept:

Simply put, ASUS are wanting to combine two chipsets on one motherboard – the X58 socket 1366, and the X79 socket 2011.  If we completely disregard the technical challenges this faces, it provides the interesting idea of something that might be possible in the future:  You want to upgrade your machine to the latest chipset and processor.  Rather than throw your old processor away or sell it on, you could buy a motherboard that lets you harness the power of the old processor and a new processor together, in some form of chimerism.

As for the technical challenges in producing such a product, I could reel off a whole list.  For a start, chipsets are not designed to talk to each other.  Processors need dual QPI links to talk to each other of the same model – how that would work with different socket processors with different caches and core counts is also a mystery, as with 1366 you would need an appropriate Xeon.  With two chipsets, you’ll have to have a different set of memory for each processor, and possibly getting a mismatch there based on dual/tri/quad channel memory.  Each processor requires its power and a set of PCIe each – unless you disregard the PCIe of one of the chipsets but then you would have to have at least the processor of the other socket in order to run a discrete GPU.  The same goes with SATA ports, I/O connectors, USB headers, and so on.

Obviously, this board presented is a mockup – merely bits and pieces put together.  It’s showing sixteen SATA 3 Gbps and six SATA 6 Gbps for a start, as well as no significant power delivery and an obscene form factor.  ASUS only want to know that if there was a demand for such a product, despite the technical limitations.

These days the reverse has happened. High end USB sticks now look a lot like small SSDs. USB 3.0 SSDs were either too bulky to carry around or weren’t that impressive from a performance standpoint, but SuperTalent just showed me one that is quite tempting.

This is the SuperTalent USB 3.0 Express RC8, it’s a USB stick that has a SF-1222 controller just like the previous generation of high end SSDs:
With four NAND devices on board, the RC8 actually has 8-channels feeding two die per package. Two channels are routed to each device, hence the use of BGA NAND vs. TSOP. SuperTalent uses 25nm IMFT NAND for the drive.

Performance as a result is quite impressive. Over USB 2.0 you’re looking at a maximum of around 40MB/s, but over USB 3.0 you can hit 200MB/s with highly compressible data:

Worst case performance for incompressible sequential writes over USB 3.0 is still only 32MB/s thanks to the one-die-per-channel architecture (as well as inherent SF limitations). Read speed is still excellent however at nearly 180MB/s.

The performance characteristics make this drive less ideal for copying large compressed videos to, but great for general use. In fact, running/installing applications or even running a full OS environment from the drive is likely a pretty good experience.

SuperTalent will offer the RC8 in 25GB, 50GB and 100GB capacities (with 32GB, 64GB and 128GB of NAND on board).
Expect availability starting late this month and pricing to be inline with standard SF-1222 based SSDs (~$110 for the 50GB drive).

(visit the source link for more photos)

Made in order to give the possibility to any own to boost their PC performances by moving your OS SWAP on 8GB of SSD, these solutions however could be in the future capable to feature much more storage space and even the possibility to manufacturer to built-up ultra slim notebook where all your storage capacity will be located in your Hybrid Drive. To the question why only 8GB of SSD, LG Hitachi answered us that this was manly done to keep the over all price of such solution as competitive as possible, but offering a 512GB version of these HD ODD is something technically possible right now.

Finally along side these HD ODDS, LG Hitachi also introduces their first 30mm Slot-In DVD player that has be mainly designed for Slim Sot-up Box and other tailored made PCs.

You get a standard Windows 8 desktop as well as the new tiled start screen. USB devices will work and MS even did a demo of copying files off of a USB thumb drive.

NVIDIA had a Kal-El based notebook and tablet on display. Microsoft showed task manager displaying all four threads during H.264 decode acceleration.

MSI’s Z68A-GD80 (G3) features new circuitry and switches between the CPU socket and the x16 slots that will apparently allow the motherboard to operate at PCIe Gen 3 speeds. The problem seems confined to the switches that motherboard makers use to automatically divide the 16 PCIe lanes coming from the CPU into 1 x16 or 2 x8. MSI claims that when Ivy Bridge comes out, the Z68A-GD80 (G3) will be fully PCIe Gen 3 compliant.

Of course MSI had a Socket-2011 X79 motherboard on display in addition to a pair of Socket-FM1 Llano boards. I’m hearing late summer for the desktop Llano launch at this point.

Those of you waiting for Bulldozer performance results from Computex, I’m afraid we’re not going to see anything representative of final hardware. I did hear that the upcoming B2 stepping would restore performance to Bulldozer’s original targets, however it’s unclear how those compare to Sandy Bridge. The other thing I did hear at the show floor regarding Bulldozer was about its clock speed. Current B1 stepping parts are easily hitting 3.8GHz which is what the high end SKU may actually ship at (with turbo support up to 4.2GHz). I’m waiting for more confirmation but it sounds like Bulldozer will at least clock very high.

Given the current price of memory, Patriot expects the default configuration for SNB-E systems to be a kit of four 4GB DIMMs for a total of 16GB. Sandy Bridge E isn’t expected until the Fall at the earliest so memory pricing isn’t certain, but Patriot expects a 16GB SNB-E memory kit to sell for around $130 when Division4 is released later this year.