Upcoming Intel Based Motherboards from GIGABYTE, ASUS, MSI and ASRock
by Ian Cutress on April 28, 2014 3:30 AM ESTASUS’ New Products
The ASUS set of images came about via a leak at an APAC event. Apparently one media representative invited to that event (and should have been under NDA) took pictures and then distributed them via Weibo in spite of the NDA. At this present time ASUS has not officially released any other pictures of its range, so we are left to decipher these blurry photographs.
The whole range seems to have removed the mustard color and gone for a more subtle dull metallic gold. The iconography is around the livery and a chipset heatsink with a circular image.
First up is the mini-ITX model:
Here ASUS have put the 24-pin ATX power connector outside the DRAM slots and the CPU power connector is in an easy to reach place on the top. The socket area is more central, meaning the chipset is squashed down towards the PCIe slot. The SATA ports are spread out such that two are near the 24-pin ATX (along with a USB 3.0 header) and two are inside the DRAM slots at the bottom.
On the high end of the market is the Deluxe:
The styling is easier to see here, especially with the power delivery heatsink reaching around three sides of the CPU socket. On the right there are some SATA Express ports, with an M.2 just between the chipset heatsink and what looks like the TPU switch. As the Deluxe is high up the scale of the board list, we see two USB 3.0 headers near the 24-pin ATX connector as well as an 802.11ac WiFi module on the rear IO. It looks like the audio also has had an update, and we move to Dual Intelligent Processors V (five).
The workstation model was also on display:
Despite the small grainy picture, we see four PCIe slots and a heatsink exactly where a PLX8747 would be, suggesting an x8/x8/x8/x8 PCIe layout for four-way SLI. It is perhaps interesting that we see this on the WS and not on the Deluxe. Like the Deluxe we have dual USB 3.0 headers, SATA Express ports and an M.2 slot. There are dual two-digit debugs at the bottom for enhanced error reporting, and the chipset heatsink is larger than the others, perhaps to accommodate a controller or two.
There is also an image of three ROG motherboards being released, including the Hero, Gene, and the Ranger which is new to the brand.
TUF gets some love as well with the Sabertooth:
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Marlowe - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Yeah this transfer to PCIe based storage is really exciting. But why don't we see any drives in the shops? The PCIe M.2 SSD's are impossible to find, just the "fake" SATA based ones that offer no performance advantage over mSATA are available. Also where are the 1 GB/s+ fast 2,5" SATA-express drives?Do you think the x2 M.2 will just be a stopgap solution until we get x4 across the board? ASRock seems to already be on the way. And how fast do you think we'll see x8 and x16 based M.2?
SirKnobsworth - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
The M.2 spec only supports x4 at the moment. I don't know if there are enough pins to support more lanes in a future revision. We are starting to see x8 PCIe SSDs though, not that consumer level PCs will have enough lanes to support those for another year or so.Marlowe - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Thanks for the answer.Antronman - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Because PCIe storage is (currently) very expensive.It's the fastest available, but comes at a steep price.
James5mith - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
I would love to see more coverage of the "industrial" side boards from Asrock. I only recently discovered them, and just like on the consumer side, they give their competitors (for me, Supermicro) a serious run for the money on both cost and feature set.xeizo - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Wake me up when Haswell-E is available ...dj_aris - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Storage in 2014 is a mess. We know SATA and mSATA are limited to 6GBps but M.2 and SATA Express come in several flavors (speeds) but without any actual availability (excluding from the SATA M.2 drives which are actually mSATA drives with M.2 adaptors). So, since 9-series boards are actually all about supporting new storage options (Broadwell support is another reason I guess but there is no Broadwell yet), it's way too early to pick a board because you don't actually know which format will take off. So frustrating.willis936 - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Perhaps that's went they're all strutting their usual marketing fluff before even announcing a chipset.Edkiefer - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
On first 2 Gigabyte MB with 4 PCIe slots , why do they have the 16x slot at very top slot . this way your limited on big air coolers like D14/15, NH 14S .unless second pcie can support 16x with single card .sherlockwing - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Because people with that much money to buy a 4PCIe board are going water most of the time anyway. This have been the trend on all flagship boards(ASUS ROGs the last few generations for example).