Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of Computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner is NCI XCOM guys it's still Computex 2013 for some reason I guess it's because it's not over yet and we are here in the asrock booth where I am holding a motherboard that looks pretty much like any other motherboard except for the very outrageous color scheme as well as some you know water cooling Barb's here on the vrm cooling solution and all that kind of cool stuff you got four PCI Express 16x graphics cards oh wait what's that hold on a minute come over here I can have a closer look what is this alright now I have long said that every motherboard needs to have a matte black PCB I now officially have to take that back because the glossy black PCB on the ass rock OC formula z87 board enables it to actually be waterproof they have a live demo here with this system running this video demo right here of the board receiving its conformal coating so you check that out and they have that demo running on a computer that has water running over it this is absolutely freaking unbelievable and what you might think to yourself is well why do I need a liquid proof motherboard I can think of a couple reason number one is extreme overclocking so this board actually comes with a little a little nick sheet right there little Nick she's signature so he is a very famous overclocker he's got his designed by badge on this board when you are extreme overclocking it is incredibly important to avoid condensation condensation can destroy your motherboard if you're not using as the 87 OC formula because wetness can become conductive very very quickly boom zap it's dead so for extreme overclocking where condensations an issue then this is very beneficial now I can even think of applications that this might be awesome that aren't extreme overclocking such as liquid cooling if you're worried about Oh a pipe burst somewhere and you get some water on your board don't worry about it with this board you can actually I mean I don't I still don't really recommend it you know firing it right up because the water might have gotten on thing else but you won't have to worry about your motherboard at all it's got a bunch of other cool features including check this out a status o LED display gone are the days evidently of just like two little sort of you know single-digit things next to each other now you can monitor things like temperature as well as base clock and all that kind of cool stuff right on the motherboard itself you've also got onboard switches dual BIOS dual USB 3 ports over there at the front onboard overclocking switches as well as voltage check points right there at the back behind the 24 pin connector and check this out this is a feature that's going to be very beneficial for guys like gamers guys who have a secondary gaming system that they want to hook up to their monitor so for a long time companies like BenQ have been releasing monitors that have multiple inputs such as DVI and HDMI or dual HDMI so you can easily run both your computer and your game console through your monitor but what as rocks done is they've added an HDMI pass-through that allows you to use your computer to switch what is displayed on your monitor making it a more seamless experience than reaching around to the back ear computer and unplugging or plugging something in or even reaching up to your monitor to change the source input so if running water over a motherboard while its operating wasn't ridiculous enough for you this right here is the z87 extreme 11 AC it has wireless AC it's got overclocking features it supports up to 4-way crossfire so you can see that running right there and it actually gets more ludicrous than that so check out this this is an SSD array a massive number of SSDs 22 SSDs count them four wide by five deep and then an extra two that are sitting back there at the back and I have something to share with you guys these are all connected to the z87 extreme 11 AC right over here so this is using the six SATA three six gigabit per second connectors that are provided by Intel's chipset you actually can't really see them all unless you get right in there at that angle so there are six coming straight out of the board and there are another 16 sas3 connectors running off of an LSI sas3 chip that is built into this motherboard if you have a serious need for storage don't think that you're limited to just SSDs if you want to run 22 SATA 3 or 6 SATA 3 with 16 SAS 3 devices off of your board at the same time for whatever reason this is the only board that is even remotely capable of doing that but if you don't feel like building your own computer and pouring water all over it then check out the m8 series right here this is a new thing from asrock it's a DIY bare-bones unit that is going to allow you to get that same ridiculously ludicrously fast gaming experience that we've seen with some sort of you know some boutique builders doing with something like the ibuypower revolt for example except that it's something that you can acquire yourself and you have the flexibility of choosing your own components and building it yourself as well now you might have noticed that this is not exactly your standard run-of-the-mill bare-bones unit it uses an aluminum chassis that was actually designed by BMWs design group much like the level 10m mouse that's right here and the level 10m headset that are sitting right next to it so wouldn't these make a stunning combination the construction as I said before is aluminum and ventilation is handled by 260 millimeter fans up here in the top is quite rugged feeling as well I can actually pick the thing up by one of the handles and I don't have to worry too much about it breaking making it extremely portable and they've added some unique features as well so here on the front you've got USB 3 SuperSpeed and a slot load optical drive as well as this is kind of neat check this out so you can monitor things like your CPU clock speed as well as your time and then you can interface with it with a simple push button interface as well as a rotating rubber knob with an LED backlight now let's go ahead and see how the magic works inside so I'm going to turn it around the wrong way first as if I don't know how this works check this out magnets which are basically magic as far as I can tell so there's a window on the back how do you get away with putting a window on the back of the computer case well I'll tell you how by having extremely clean cable management so the case comes cable managed for you pretty much you don't have to worry about that and you can actually see the reinforcement that's on the motherboard tray here I mean it's one of Steve Jobs as design philosophies that a great device should look great not only on the outside but also on the inside so having clean cable management really does show that attention to detail that not all things achieve the side window also has kind of a unique octagon based concentric octagons design that you either like or you'll dislike personally I really like it moving on to the inside we see very short cable runs which again is a desirable feature and we also see check this out that is a full size graphics card you could fairly easily run pretty much any graphics card you wanted in here with the exception of sort of ludicrous stuff like our Radeon 7990 but you could easily get a GTX 780 in here it uses an SFX power supply but don't worry that won't matter to you because it comes with that it also uses an ITX motherboard that has onboard Wi-Fi as well as support for up to to 8 gig dims of ddr3 and support for pretty much any Intel CPU you'd want as long as it's has well so that's an LGA 1150 socket so you're going to want to put the latest 46 70 K or 4770k CPU into the unit so I can never remember this so I'm going to get my lovely assistant to come and tell me this what do you actually have to add to this system in order to make it functional ok users who buy this m8 series motherboard can have the freedom of choosing their own CPU and graphics card or if they need more stars then they can add more storage into the motherboard so three things three things so why couldn't I remember that maybe because it's appearances is too stunning yeah I'm certainly stunned right now so guys don't miss any of our Computex 2013 coverage remember our trip to the show this year is powered by Western Digital as well as Corsair Vengeance gaming peripherals and NCIX comm as always guys don't forget to make sure you're subscribed to Linus tech tips so you don't miss any of our video content