Limited Edition Gold Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9981 Goes Official

Porsche Design’s BlackBerry P'9981 smartphone was already an appealing device, but it seems that the company felt there was room for more, so a new flavor of the handset is set to arrive on shelves in July, all dressed up in gold.

The new flavor of the device is said to be made out of a stainless steel case with a gold-colored titanium coating, while also featuring a 24-carat gold layer on top, and a 24-carat gold camera cover. The device will arrive on the market in a very small number of units, as only 25 such devices will become available for purchase worldwide through certain Porsche Design stores.

However, as CrackBerry notes, no changes will be made to the hardware specifications of the mobile phone, which means that the gold P'9981 will be identical with the other models.

Gold Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9981
Image credits to Crackberry

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Top Z87 ATX Motherboards from Gigabyte

Gigabyte isn't going to pull any punches at Computex 2013. The trade show in early June, taking place in Taipei, Taiwan, will play host to quite a few motherboards, as well as other products.

 We've already seen one of the mainboards that Gigabyte will bring to the trade show: the very small but very thorough Z87N-WiFi, which happens to be the world's first mini-ITX Z87 platform ever. Not that it's saying all that much. After all, it's not like there are so many Z87 motherboards up for sale at this time, and small ones are rarer than the rest. But we digress. We are here to talk about the other two platforms that Gigabyte managed to leak through LegitReviews website. They are called Z87X-UD4H and Z87X-UD5H and have the full ATX form factor. If we're reading things right, they will be the top-tier models in the LGA 1150 series. Z87X-UD4H has three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (for graphics cards, electrical x16/x8/x4), a PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot, a legacy PCI slot, eight internal SATA 6 Gbps ports and two eSATA 6 Gbps ports.  Thus, the bases are all covered, and then some. The ten USB 3.0 ports (six back panels, four headers) and the multiple video ports only reinforce that impression.

Speaking of video ports, the list is made up of DisplayPort, DVI, D-Sub, HDMI. All of them will be rather superfluous when an add-in video board is installed, but it's the thought that counts. Other specifications include a 16-phase power supply, 8-channel HD audio, a hot-rod red+silver+black color-scheme, and Ultra Durable 5 components. As for the Z87X-UD5H, it is colored gold+silver+black, has two DVI ports instead of just one (lacks D-Sub though), uses Dual Gigabit Ethernet LAN, has ten internal SATA 6 Gbps ports, and gets FireWire. The prices will be of over $150 / €150, for both.

Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H
Image credits to LegitReviews

Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H
Image credits to LegitReviews

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Gigabyte Z87N-WiFi, First Mini-ITX Z87 Motherboard

One would think that the high-end chipset meant to support Intel's Haswell CPUs would only be found on ATX motherboards and larger, and maybe the occasional micro-ATX, but this is not the case.

Gigabyte hasn't released the press shots yet, but the folks over at LegitReviews have managed to snag a few photographs of one Z87N-WiFi motherboard when it was unveiled the other day. The main trait of the motherboard is that it is smaller than most other PC platforms, featuring the mini-ITX form factor. It is the first Z87-based mini-ITX mainboard, albeit probably not the last. Given the ease with which a PC can be made powerful even without large mainboards, we don't doubt that Gigabyte's competitors will unveil similar inventions. At any rate, the Z87N-WiFi gets its name from the Lynx Point chipset we've already named, and the 802.11ac WLAN technology. The Z87 chipset brings with it the LGA 1150 socket which, in turn, ensures compatibility with the Haswell central processing units bound for June release.

4-phase power supply delivers energy to the CPU socket, as well as the two DDR3 DIMM memory slots (dual-channel supported). A lone PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot is present, but that makes sure top-tier video boards are supported. Sure, in the end, the chassis will determine which video cards will fit, but that's not the Z87N-WiFi's fault. Moving on, the reason the WiFi is part of the name is that wireless support isn't integrated in the mainboard. Instead, it is delivered by an add-in card slotted into the mini PCI Express slot.

Other specs include four SATA 6 Gbps ports, a pair of HDMI connectors, dual-link DVI, six USB 3.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and 8-channel HD audio. Everything gets energy from the PSU via a combination of 24-pin and 4-pin ATX connectors.

Gigabyte Z87N-WiFi Mini-ITX Motherboard
Images credits to LegitReviews

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