Biostar Shares Next Gen Motherboard Features and is going for 10 Gbit Ethernet
Biostar shared some information on their Z270 series motherboards ahead of CES. It's mostly the same as Z170 really with a couple of changes and RGB bling for most manufacturers. However on the network front there is news to report alright.
Their second generation Racing series motherboards obviously support 7th generation of Intel Core processors, Kaby lake. You will spot protective covers for M.2 slots and smaller things, what I really do like though is the addition of 10Gbps Ethernet.
For the 10 Gbps jack an Intel X550 is used that offers up to 10 times the transfer speed of traditional Gigabit Ethernet. Combine that with a nice 10 GBit switch and NAS, the you'll understand that the storage paradigm is going to change and shift alright.
M.2. wise the new implementation features an M.2 cooling protection. basically a heatsink that offers cooling. this helps greatly with thermal issues and thus performance throttling.
Another feature is a Lightning Charger function which supports QC2.0 (12V/1.5A output), Apple Mode (5V /2.4A) and BC1.2 for ultra fast charging of mobile devices.
LED and RGB features. VIVID LED Armor enhances the protection for the I/O interfaces and electronic audio components without static electricity and it comes integrated with onboard LED lighting for DIY fun. The 550 LED Fun Zone is brand new and it combines two 5050 LED headers for DIY builders to let their ideas come out.
BIOSTAR introduces new features to further enhance the degree of performance and style that the BIOSTAR RACING series is known for. Some of these features include the brand-new M.2 Cooling Protection, 10GbE LAN, Lightning Charger and the improved ones for LED lighting, such as VIVID LED Armor and 5050 LED Fun Zone, for DIY lovers and lighting enthusiasts. From excellent power delivery for a more stable operation all the way to new ways of improving the visual appeal and style of your system to make it stand out and pop for your next theme. Combined, these new features will bring a new level of experience for gamers and enthusiasts.
M.2 Cooling Protection
BIOSTAR RACING 2nd-generation motherboards will be the first to have an M.2 heatsink that features ultra-high cooling efficiency to protect M.2 devices connected to the onboard M.2 slot and chipset from thermal issues thus expanding M.2 device lifespan for long-term usage and overall stable operation even under high system load.
Intel 10GbE LAN
Intel’s X550 chipset supports 10GbE LAN, delivering 10 times faster data transfer speed and bandwidth than traditional GbE LAN as well as bringing with it lower power consumption. Together with the latest Intel 7th-generation processors, this will be the fastest motherboards for online game.
Lightning Charger
The new 2nd-generation BIOSTAR RACING motherboards will be the first to have the new Lightning Charger which helps the battery of enabled devices, including smartphones or tablets, to achieve up to 75% charge in just 30 minutes. It supports QC2.0 (12V/1.5A output), Apple Mode (5V /2.4A) and BC1.2.
VIVID LED Armor
The new VIVID LED Armor enhances the Armor protection for the I/O interfaces and electronic audio components without static electricity. It comes integrated with onboard LED lighting for DIY fun. This feature also enhance performance as it keeps the system stable and protected from dust build-up and static interference.
5050 LED Fun Zone
The brand-new 5050 LED Fun Zone comes with two 5050 LED headers to bring more colorful lighting options to DIY lovers. This improves upon the original feature allowing for a much more flexible way of adding lights to your system.
Digital Power+
Digital Power+ uses IR’s digital power controller to bring your PC and processor exceptionally high-performance and ultra-stable operation.
High-Speed U.2 32Gb/s Connector
This unique technology uses PCI Express 3.0 x4 for a maximum of 32Gb/s of bandwidth resulting in transfer rates as fast as 6.5x more than traditional SATA solid-state drives.
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Senior Member
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jeez 10 Gbit Ethernet, lucky to have 80megs dl here in the UK. The only lines here faster are Business packages or if you are lucky Virgin is available in the area you live.
I don't really understand the benefit of such fast internet when SSD's/HDD's only write data @ around 500mb/s.
UK Gov are promising 2 billion pound on updating internet infrastructure but again what does that even mean since whom do you even give that money to? BT? I have no idea how that will work.
Senior Member
Posts: 2639
Joined: 2010-01-03
jeez 10 Gbit Ethernet, lucky to have 80megs dl here in the UK. The only lines here faster are Business packages or if you are lucky Virgin is available in the area you live.
I don't really understand the benefit of such fast internet when SSD's/HDD's only write data @ around 500mb/s.
sata ssd can do about 500megaBYTEs/s and hdd do around 120, 120 is already a bit more than your gigabit lan can handle
this 10gbe port could handle twice the speed of the average sata ssd, but only half of what an NVME one can do, that'd be good enough for me, its been like forever stuck in 1gigabit ports
Senior Member
Posts: 2028
Joined: 2010-05-26
sata ssd can do about 500megaBYTEs/s and hdd do around 120, 120 is already a bit more than your gigabit lan can handle
this 10gbe port could handle twice the speed of the average sata ssd, but only half of what an NVME one can do, that'd be good enough for me, its been like forever stuck in 1gigabit ports
Don't get me wrong i'm all for new technologies but for me personally it'd be like having PCIe 4.0 at additional cost while PCIe 2.0 would give same result in performance with a single card.
Hopefully 10gbe doesn't cost anything extra over 1gbe because it's paying for something you can never use. (atleast in UK right now)
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Posts: 954
Joined: 2010-08-24
sata ssd can do about 500megaBYTEs/s and hdd do around 120, 120 is already a bit more than your gigabit lan can handle
this 10gbe port could handle twice the speed of the average sata ssd, but only half of what an NVME one can do, that'd be good enough for me, its been like forever stuck in 1gigabit ports
Except 90% of the time you aren't getting those speeds because it's random data.
I've had a gigabit connection 2 years ago (actually I'm now waiting for a gigabit connection again, I've been moving a lot) and I can tell you this: a hard-drive is pure crap at handling gigabit transfers. My Spinpoint F3 would spend most of its time around the 40MB/s segment with occasional (read: pretty damn rare) spikes towards 70MB/s.
My old Corsair Force 3 SSD couldn't keep it together above 90MB/s (it rarely touched this figure) and my Kingston Fury Savage hovered between 100-110MB/s which is approaching the bandwidth cap. The thing is, it did NOT feel like there's a lot of headroom left as most other external operations would slow the download down, albeit not as significantly as in a HDD's case - low access time is good for this.
Don't assume that SSDs can hold gigabit transfers like it's nothing because it's not true. SSDs are subject to horrendous marketing and those 500MB/s you hear of are achievable in the best possible conditions.
A regular SSD is _just enough_ for a gigabit connection.
Senior Member
Posts: 2639
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yay finally, the future is a bit sad though, by the time 10gbe becomes standard, most laptops will probably lack any form of native ethernet port