Just a few days before the official launch of the Intel Sandy Bridge E desktop platform, the guys from VR-Zone managed to score some pictures of Sapphire's Pure Black X79 motherboard.

Sapphire's Pure Black X79 features a 7-phase VRM design, support for Intel's upcoming LGA2011 Sandy Bridge E CPU, has four DDR3 memory slots for some quad-channel support and a total of six PCI-Express slots. The X79 chip is placed under a small fan while the VRM part has its own larger heatsink.

The rest of the specs include four SATA 6.0Gbps and four SATA 3.0Gbps ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, two eSATA ports, six USB 3.0 ones (two via header), bunch of USB 2.0 ports, Bluetooth, 7.1-channel audio, debug LED, UEFI BIOS, power, reset and clear CMOS buttons and voltage read points.

The new Sapphire Pure Black X79 is expected to hit retail as soon as Intel gives a green light for the release of Sandy Bridge E desktop platform. You can find more pictures here.