Intel DZ87KLT-75K Motherboard Preview

Whenever a new chipset launches, so does a new reference board from Intel, and today sees the DZ87KLT-75K being the board in question. Now while we can’t divulge huge amounts of information in terms of features to do with the chipset and speaking about performance completely out of question, we can obviously comment on the design of the board and its aesthetics.

Firstly, it is worth noting that you are unlikely to see mass amounts of these boards appear within the retail sector, as they are generally used as reference and media viewing, though you may occasionally see them used in system integrator machines or for OEM purposes, but as it gives a further insight into the upcoming technology, we want to show as much as we can without giving too much away.

You’ll notice some similarities with their previous reference boards including those from Z77 and X79 with the black PCB and blue colour scheme that surrounds it, but with Intel being Intel, it would be wrong not to use their own blue colouring, right? It uses an ATX form factor and is jam packed full of features, so we will try to highlight a few that we can see from a visual perspective, as we don’t really want to get in trouble for breaking any NDA’s.

Around the CPU socket we find two Intel branded blue heatsinks, with one quite small and the other quite the opposite with it being on the large scale and including a skull as we’ve see before from Intel. There is still plenty of space around the CPU socket and a single 8-pin ATX power connector gives us an idea on the power delivery for the CPU giving us a small indication as to what we can work with in terms of overclocking.

The other cooling on the board is a small Intel branded heatsink covering over the chipset Not much else to see here barring some jumpers, SATA ports and a Mini PCI-Express/mSATA expansion slot.

As with all of our previews, we’ve kept the writing short, and focussed more on the videos, and therefore we invite you to check out the video below for a more in-depth look at the design of the board, but don’t expect any benchmarks or performance results, as remember this is just a preview.

 [youtube]http://youtu.be/lpfnNKhPKRQ[/youtube]

Design wise, for a reference board, Intel have really done a great job. The black PCB and the cosmic blue colour scheme really adds a professional feel to it, and the inclusion of the skull shows that it means business, and we can only hope that is reflected in the review in terms of performance and of course; overclocking.

Feature wise, we can see plenty of SATA ports, a nice variety of expansion lanes with x16 and x1 PCI-Express and a legacy PCI lane for those with older generation expansion cards. Also on top of this is the Mini PCI-Express/mSATA slot just beneath the Intel branded chipset cooler for those wanting to add even more functionality to their system. Debug LEDs and quick buttons for power and reset will see overclockers and enthusiasts loving this board too and with plenty of fan headers jotted around the board for extra cooling, which enthusiasts should also welcome with open arms.

Rounding things off, this isn’t a lot more we can say without getting in trouble with our friends at Intel, so we have to cut things a bit short and leave it there, as all of the features that we can mention are in a what you see is what you get style, and hopefully the video has more than shown you that in terms of specifications and of course design.

With talks of this being the last Intel board being produced before they pull out of the DIY market, we can honestly say that they’ve finished things off nicely, but we sure do hope that there is more to come in the future from them, as this is certainly an improvement on the Z77, which was an improvement over its predecessor, so it’s clear to say that Intel are learning and fast, and we hope that the rumours stay as just that; rumours.