Gigabyte Teases Liquid Cooled Z87 G1-Killer Motherboard

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Some teasers have surfaced of Gigabyte's upcoming Z87 G1-Killer Motherboard.

So far a number of manufacturers, including Asus, MSI, Biostar and ASRock, have shown us its motherboards intended to be used with Intel's upcoming Haswell CPUs, but we haven't seen much from Gigabyte until now. We have a sneak peek at Gigabyte's flagship G1-Killer Z87 motherboard, and it's impressive.

It appears that the board, as intended for gamers and enthusiasts, will be liquid coolable. While the heatsinks would probably do the job fine by themselves, water cooling will definitely give it some killer looks and might even help with extreme overclocking.

Connectivity looks to be gold-plated. It includes two HDMI ports, a single DisplayPort, a Coaxial port as well as an optical SPDIF port and 7.1 analogue audio out. The remaining ports are likely blacked out from the teaser. Sound processing appears to be taken care of by a Sound Core3D chip from Creative.

While we're waiting for the Haswell CPUs to be released, enjoy the teasers below.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • wanderer11
    I wonder if the motherboard having an onboard display port means Haswell IGPU will support WQHD.
    Reply
  • Thomas Hock
    I hope they make a model that removes the display ports and replaces them with USB 3.0 ports and a thunderbolt port. I don't see the crowd of people who are buying a water-cooled motherboard to go crazy on on-board video. unless Nvidia and AMD graphics can channel the video output via on-board ports on the Z87. *doubt it*
    Reply
  • scook9
    Pretty sure that water block picture is an Asus Maximus V Formula Z77 board.....
    Reply
  • hero1
    That's exactly what it means. My ASUS Maximu V Formula has it and it runs my 27" Dell at full resolution of 2560x1440p. It makes it really awesome to switch from discreet to iGPU without losing resolution.
    Reply
  • My guess is $399 at release. Overkill but cool tech.
    Reply
  • shadowfamicom
    I have had my ASUS Xonar Essence STX almost 2 years now, and all I can say is that it was like in the early 2000's when I switched from earbuds to big headphones... I was hearing notes in songs that I had listened to 1000's of times before, but had never heard. I use my Sennheiser HD555's with them and it is absolutely amazing. Hell even cheap $30 headphones sound so much better. My high end motherboard built in sound could not compete with it.
    Reply
  • shadowfamicom
    and that's how you post a comment to the wrong story!
    Reply
  • falchard
    Is that pure gold? If so... Guess this motherboard is a safe investment verse inflation.
    Reply
  • soundping
    Any motherboard from gigabyte will have 'iffy' bios.
    Reply
  • Cons29
    creative, ouch
    Reply