ASUS Motherboards

As always, ASUS had a strong presence at the show.

First off was the entirely passively-cooled A8N-SLI Premium based on the nForce4 SLI chipset:

The use of a heat pipe to cool the chipset makes a lot of sense, and it ends up being cooler than a fan-based solution. Also note that the selector card has been ditched in favor of IC based switching.

On the rear I/O panel you will notice that there is a red external SATA port underneath the first two USB ports. External SATA is becoming increasingly more popular on motherboards these days.

ASUS also showcased a BTX form factor nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboard:

The final board we saw from ASUS was a dual Opteron board based on the nForce4 Professional chipset. ASUS indicated that the board would also have overclocking options, for those of you interested in Opteron workstation overclocking.

Impressive Cooling from Zalman ABIT's nForce4 SLI Fatal1ty
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  • bigboxes - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link

    That cmos reset button on Abit's front panel is pretty cool, if not somewhat of a gimmick. It just seems that the mobo mfgrs don't bother in asking the customers what we really want. If a mobo has a great bios then it's lacking in controllers or if it has higher DIMM voltage settings then it has ridiculous colors and LEDs.
  • Doormat - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link

    Wow, a PC-based cablecard tuner is being held up by DRM requirements? What a surprise. Mark my words it'll never make it to market. I'd venture to say that we might see CC 2.0 tuners for a closed platform like the Xbox360 or PS3 (to turn it into a Tivo-like device), but never for a standalone PC. The MPAA would have to fall apart before a PC cablecard tuner will be allowed to be sold in the US.
  • Waylay00 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link

    Wow, looks great! Must have A8N-SLI Premium...

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