PC Games Hardware has managed to snap some pictures of both Asus' and MSI's P55 motherboards and although neither company seems to be quite ready at this point in time, we have a feeling that Computex could well be the launch time for socket 1160 processors and motherboards.
Asus is showing off two models, the P7U and P7U Pro, with the difference between the two being that the Pro model has a pair of x16 PCIe slots. Both boards have a single, open ended PCIe x4 slot, two PCIe x1 slots (three for the P7U) and a PCI slot. Then there are four DDR3 memory slots, five SATA, an IDE, four USB 2.0 headers for eight USB 2.0 ports and get this, a floppy connector. Around the back you'll find a PS/2 port, six USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, FireWire and 7.1-channel analogue audio.
The MSI board goes under the name of G7P55-DC or the MS-7581 and it is a higher-end board than the two from Asus. MSI has fitted it with three PCIe x16 slots, two PCIe x1 slots and two PCI slots. There's of course four DDR3 memory slots and MSI has gone for eight SATA connectors, a single IDE connector, four additional USB headers for an extra eight USB 2.0 ports and just like Asus, a floppy connector. Around the back you'll find two PS/2 ports, six USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, eSATA, a DVI and D-sub connector, dual Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out.
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