Asus on Monday announced the launch of its P8Z77-V Premium motherboard, the flagship slice of silicon in the P8Z77 Series and, as it happens to be the case, the first Intel certified mainboard to boast a Thunderbolt interface, the company claims. Remember Thunderbolt? It's the previously much hyped high-speed interface from Intel that was supposed to give USB 3.0 a run for its money, though Intel claimed from Day 1 that the two technologies were meant to co-exist and not necessarily compete with each other.

If Intel's Ivy Bridge ultimately crumbles, it won't be for lack of vendor support. While the tech world waits for Intel to launch its 3rd generation Core processor family, motherboard makers and system integrators are busy pushing out upgraded platforms that support the upcoming CPUs, everything from big and bad notebooks to little motherboards like Zotac's new Z77-ITX Wi-Fi and H77-ITX Wi-Fi, a pair of Intel 7-series mini ITX boards intended for anyone who wants to pack big performance into a small footprint.

Biostar's chefs just finished baking a new batch of high end motherboards for Intel's Z77 chipset, one of which includes the company's flagship TZ77XE4 model. The TZ77XE4 plays nice with both 3rd generation (Ivy Bridge) and 2nd generation (Sandy Bridge) processors in a socket 1155 package (don't try plunking your Sandy Bridge-E processor into one of these boards, they require a socket 2011 motherboard).

Love him or hate him, Fatal1ty (or Johnathan Wendel, as his mother calls him) continues to have his gaming moniker plastered throughout the do-it-yourself (DIY) scene on a wide range of peripherals, and somebody's buying all these products up. Apparently still relevant, the famous Fatal1ty brand has found its way onto the new ASRock/Fatal1ty X79 Professional motherboard for gamers.