So they asked me to review this and I didn’t answer them, I should have, but I didn’t because I don’t have a socket 1150 CPU and honestly I can’t afford one so there’s no way I could review it. I’d love to review it, I do need to upgrade as I’m still on socket 1155 with a Core i7 2600K CPU and yes it still works fine, but in the tech business as this is I guess you need to be able to afford the latest and I don’t make any money doing this stuff. Anyway, details below for you about the new Biostar Z97 motherboard..
BIOSTAR, maker of embedded/IPC solutions, graphics cards, and motherboards has introduced Intel’s next generation Haswell based motherboard, the Hi-Fi Z97WE. It comes with many BIOSTAR in-house features such as “Hi-Fi” audio technology.
The Hi-Fi Z97WE is an ATX form factor board that features Intel socket 1150 support. It has 4 memory slots for up to 32GB of RAM. The on-board LAN controller also supports 10/100/1000/2000 with “Teaming” mode. The on-board HDMI supports 4K and 2K resolutions.
It includes the usual high-end motherboard features like USB 3.0, HDMI and PCI-E slots, as well as the newest PCIe development, the “M.2” form factor. The M.2 standard is the newest and smallest form factor implementation of the SATA Express interface (which provides support for PCI Express 3.0 and Serial ATA 3.0), with the addition of an internal USB 3.0 interface. It supports multiple functions for add-in cards, including the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, satellite navigation, near field communication (NFC), digital radio, Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig), wireless WAN (WWAN), and solid-state drives (SSDs).
But being a BIOSTAR board, there is a premium set of features including the company’s unique “Hi-Fi” technology. All the BIOSTAR Hi-Fi series motherboards are equipped with isolate circuit design and high quality components to ensure the best possible audio quality consistency.
The Hi-Fi Z97WE also features BIOSTAR’s dual Gigabit LAN card functionality that takes networking and gaming to new levels. To achieve this, the Hi-Fi Z97WE has “dual Gigabit LAN” connections on the board that allow simultaneous LAN connections. The primary advantage is the doubling of bandwidth which allows the network bandwidth of 1G to become that of 2G. It also allows for Full-duplex transmission. Two network cards can be simultaneously transmitted to upload and download at the same time. In addition, there is zero packet delay with two high-speed gigabit networks, giving super high data transmission efficiency. Another major advantage is “Load Balancing” which allows users to attach both network adapters to a single network. It will therefore support the aggregation “teaming” function by merging the two connections to support multiple aggregation modes.
In addition, with BIOSTAR’s dual Gigabit LAN connections you get network insurance. These boards come with two Gigabit Ethernet lightning protection circuits, there are cross-efficient in reducing the probability of damage from lightning or other power surge. So if one connection is disabled the other connection will automatically kick in.
Lastly, being based on the Intel Z97 chipset, the Hi-Fi Z97WE also comes with Intel SRT (Smart Response Technology), Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology), Intel Rapid Start Technology and Intel Smart Connect Technology all built into the system, ready to go.
For more on the Hi-Fi Z97WE go to: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=731