Component and systems manufacturer ASUStek has just announced the availability of its next ROG ( Republic of Gamers ) motherboard, the Maximus VII Formula. ASUS has a somewhat mystifying naming convention, though we've defined the company's board names in the past. The Maximus Formula series of motherboards is considered ASUS' flagship -- the highest of the high-end -- and is iterated with Roman numerals. The Z97 family is indicated by the VII numeral.

The weekend sales roundup features an i5-4690K for $220, a Z97 motherboard at $125, a Mini-ITX case around $71, and the G700s gaming mouse for only $60. This next week should have more sales as the US gets closer to the 4th of July, commonly known as the holiday celebrating how to influence politics by hiding behind trees and shooting people. Our Twitter and Facebook pages will provide sales as we find them, and stay subscribed to our YouTube account for how-to videos and reviews of components.

Asustek (NASDAQ: ASUUY) Chairman Jonney Shih predicted in ASUS' Tuesday shareholder meeting that traditional desktop PC shipments would increase substantially in 2H14. The company believes that XP's expiration will be cause for a boon in desktop shipments in the business-client sector, but also noted that demand for tablets has died down in the consumer market.

With A fair amount of the new Z97 motherboards being shown already, fans of Intel's X99 enthusiast chipset may feel a bit cheated being left with nothing interesting to look at. As of Computex 2014, that's finally changed. ASrock recently showed their latest X99 board to press at Taipei's electronics and hardware tradeshow.

ASRock Extreme6 (Left) & Extreme4 (Right) X99 motherboards. Image source: VR-Zone.

This weekend's sales roundup features a low profile CPU cooler for $20, a Cherry MX Red keyboard at $107, 8GB of 2400MHz RAM for $80, and a high-end AMD AM3+ board for $200. Keep your eyes glued to our Twitter and Facebook feeds for more deals during the week.

As the embargoes are lifted across the web for Z97-equipped motherboards, we see prices and tentative release dates emerging for new platforms. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, and ASRock have all put out some sort of Z97 board teaser, but thus far ASUS is the first to supply hard pricing data.

With the Haswell refresh CPUs (Devil’s Canyon) coming out and Broadwell planned for later this year, the latest Intel motherboards for them are slowly being leaked through official and unofficial channels. The most notable feature of the new Z97 chipset is that it supports the latest SATA express interface natively, which features transfer speeds of 10-16 Gb/s and enables much faster transfer speeds for SSDs. While motherboard manufacturers aren't releasing official specs just yet, pictures of these upcoming boards have been released and from them we can find out some details.

MSI, ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, and EVGA have all posted photos and teaser specs of their Z97 motherboards. In this Z97 Broadwell / Devil’s Canyon motherboard specs round-up, we look at the next generation’s Intel board selection specs and features.

Let’s dive into this.

As consolation prizes for those of us not able to get out to PAX, here are some deals for you to take advantage of. In this edition of our weekend hardware sales round-up, we've got HyperX Blu Red Series 8GB RAM, a Corsair H60 CLC system, the Logitech G700s laser mouse we reviewed, and the MSI Z87-GD65 motherboard.

This weekend's hardware sales round-up focuses on CPU and motherboard sales, with Intel's mainstream flagship i7-4770K on sale alongside AMD's 220W FX-9370; motherboards were also located on sale, ensuring you'll be able to put these powerful CPUs to use immediately.

We're frequently asked by commenters around the web to help identify model numbers and branding for product lines by each company. Up until last year, ASUS was one of the most requested for such an article. ASUS made major motherboard branding changes in 2013 to simplify their line-up, but we figured we'd get ASUS Technical Marketing Specialist Nick Mijuskovic to give us some finality on their naming convention.

In this quick article (and video component), we'll compare ASUS' motherboard naming scheme and identify the differences between Z87-A vs. Z87-K, Z87-Plus, -Pro, -Deluxe, the TUF boards, and the ROG boards.