Posted on Tuesday, March 06 2012 @ 16:53 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
TechPowerUp
found details about the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe, a new Mini-ITX motherboard with a rich feature set. The final version is anticipated to launch in April, it offers two DDR3 slots, one PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot, four SATA ports (2x 6Gbps and 2x 3Gbps), 6-channel HD audio with 7.1 channel optical SPDIF output, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, USB 2.0, and UEFI.
Despite is ultra-compact form the designers crammed in as many features as possible, including a powerful 10-phase Digi+ VRM. ASUS found an ingenious way of designing the VRM area, by raising it to a (fixed?) add-on card north of the CPU socket. This VRM riser has the electrical controller, the 10-phase VRM, complete with chokes, drivers, and FETs, and a MOSFET heatsink. This board is one of the few of its form-factor that draws power from an 8-pin EPS, apart from the 24-pin ATX.
