BlackOps X48, F1 motherboards - Foxconn going mad

In a good way.
They showcased some of the most interesting products at CES, surely the most interesting motherboard concepts:


First they showcased the F1, a motherboard with four PCI-Express, all of which you can fill with dual slot cards and still have two PCIe x1 slots left. That packed with custom watercooling for the northbridge, southbridge and even the mosfets. On top of that, two 24-pin ATX connectors so you can plug too PSUs on the system. It made the child inside me come to life screaming: "I want one".
Information about chipsets used wasn't disclosed, only that it uses those two extra chipsets in the middle, from IDT, to split two x16 lanes in four times x8.
The downside is it's longer than what the ATX standard allows, so it won't fit even in even the most expensive ATX cases.

I this could end up in either Dell's XPS or HP Blackbird lines of enthusiast computers.
From what I could uncover both companies are partners of Foxconn, this looks like a custom job and is nothing short of cutting edge. Dell is probably the customer, since HP's Rahul Sood has touted many times that their Blackbird standard components is a key advantage, for them and the client. Dell on the other hand has adopted Intel's defunct BTX format many times, touting advantages of the design.


This is what they also showcased, the BlackOps X48 based motherboard.
It looks kind of ordinary, aside from the cooling system, until you look carefully at the power regulation area from the CPU. It packs the same thrilling capless design featured in some Asus boards like the Striker Extreme or the Asus Commando. It's difficult to discern if it's an analog or digital design though, but it has eighth phases, enough even for the most extreme overclocking.
The "mad" part also stems from the cooling design which supports aircooling, water cooling or even dry-ice and LN2 cooling - just look at the other parts in the right side of the picture.
I would love to see this refined into a final design, though the aircooling users would probably see cooling efficacy compromised with this design.

Asus and DFI better be careful, because after making waves with it's MARS motherboard, Foxconn seems to be even more committed to cater the enthusiast market.
More pictures of the other more "down-to-earth" motherboards that were showcased and the of the F1 board packing four HD3870s are available at Anandtech.

Update: The BlackOps board bios will support extreme voltages, up to 2.4V to the CPU and 2.3V to the northbridge.
Keywords: Foxconn F1 BlackOps X48 Quad-Crossfire