MaximumPC 2008 07

Intel

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Cagematch

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CCC

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If you could make the ultimate motherboard, what would it be? We sat back, rubbed

our eyes until we saw stars, and imagined what the ideal motherboard would look like

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BIGGER AND BADDER We hate to quote General

Chang, but we need breathing room! Trying to

cool hardware designed today using a formfactor

that’s more than a decade old is just foolish. This

board’s an inch bigger all the way around.

DOUBLE HEADER It can be chal-

lenging to wire a case in a way

the case-building drill sergeant

approves of, but having dual front-

panel headers—one on top and

one on the bottom—would help

keep things tidy.

REUNIFICATION

Wouldn’t it be

grand to have one

socket that sup-

ports both AMD and

Intel CPUs again?

We propose Socket

LGA2010.

SATASFACTION Excessive?

Hardly. Factor in two optical

drives, two or three hard

drives, and one or two front

eSATA ports on the case, and

you’ve blown through the

TV FOR YOUR GPUS A multiline, surface-mounted standard six SATA ports.

LCD display would give us full details on what is

happening during boot. Once booted, you would

also get the typical system telemetry informa-

tion as well as your RSS feeds, so your GPUs have

something to read.

USB BOUNTY We’d

like to see a mini-

mum of fi ve USB

internal headers

plus two internal

USB ports. Two

of those headers

would be located

at the upper-

right-hand corner

of the board, too.

SEVEN IS ENOUGH Our dream board features no fewer

than seven x16 PCI-E 2.0 slots. All operate at full-

tilt-boogie speeds, and any of them can be used for

multi-GPU confi gurations. And both CrossFire and SLI

are supported. Notice how a riser keeps the cards up

and away from the board’s surface.

COOL YOUR CHIPS Can’t we have a fast chipset

that isn’t also a small nuclear power plant?

We’re talking to you, Nvidia. We want fairly

minimal heatsinks that can be cooled passively

even when the board is overclocked.

One Mother of a Board

50 | MAXIMUMPC | JUL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

tion as well as your RSS feeds, so your GPUs have

A multiline, surface-mounted

LCD display would give us full details on what is LCD display would give us full details on what is

happening during boot. Once booted, you would

also get the typical system telemetry informa-

tion as well as your RSS feeds, so your GPUs have

A multiline, surface-mounted

LCD display would give us full details on what is LCD display would give us full details on what is

happening during boot. Once booted, you would

also get the typical system telemetry informa-

tion as well as your RSS feeds, so your GPUs have

SATASFACTIONExcessive?

Hardly. Factor in two optical

drives, two or three hard

drives, and one or two front

eSATA ports on the case, and

you’ve blown through the

A multiline, surface-mounted standard six SATA ports.

LCD display would give us full details on what is LCD display would give us full details on what is

happening during boot. Once booted, you would

also get the typical system telemetry informa-

tion as well as your RSS feeds, so your GPUs have

LCD display would give us full details on what is LCD display would give us full details on what is LCD display would give us full details on what is

happening during boot. Once booted, you would

also get the typical system telemetry informa-

tion as well as your RSS feeds, so your GPUs have