The board is aimed at second generation Core i3, i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs and uses LGA 1155 socket. It has a dual channel memory socket capable of 16GB DDR3 memory and even 32GB (4x8GB) is possible once these modules show up on market.
The board has two USB 3.0, found USB 2.0 ports plus 8 on headers as well as Gigabit LAN, Bluetooth connectivity. It has SATA 3G ports and two SATA 6G ports, as well as two more on headers. It supports Intel Rapid technology as well as RAID 1,0,5 and 10.
The board comes with four video options VGA, DVI, HDMI and Display port of which any pair can be used simultaneously. It also supports the latest 3D capable HDMI 1.4a for both video and audio. It comes with a rear panel with 8 channel HD 7.1 audio as well as SPDIF support.
There are two PCIe 16X graphics slots that will let you use two cards in Crossfire as well sa Lucid Virtu software that can mix and match graphcs cards and let your Radeon external card combine its power with Intel integrated one and give you a frame or few more. The board comes with three standard PCI slots if you use it for anything today. Sapphire belives that the boards are meant for 3D gamers that like to plug external graphics cards and use them for serious gaming, hopefully with another Sapphire’s product.
It’s a good overclocking board with 6+2 phase power and it comes with mainboard Trixx overclocking. The board also comes with two bios', which allows for experiments and updates a bit easier than before. Don’t forget the three phase memory power that will help you overclock this part of the system.
The board is black but it has high quality gold plated USB and LAN connectors. The Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 is in production now, and will be available through Sapphire's usual partners and retailers soon.
