ASUS Booth Tour at CES 2016: 10G Switches, External GPU Dock, USB-C Monitor and more
by Ian Cutress on January 19, 2016 9:00 AM ESTASUS Motherboards
No discussion about ASUS would be complete without talking about motherboards. We had already reported the announcement of the ASUS Maximus VIII Formula launch just before CES, featuring a pre-installed EKWB water block on the power delivery, but there were still a trio of surprises for us at the booth.
First up is the B150 Pro Gaming/Aura. As like other manufacturers, one of the things with this generation of Intel processors is moving some of the ‘gaming’ features on the high end Z series motherboards down to lower cost chipsets in order to add value. This includes styled heatsinks, a color scheme, upgraded audio in some cases, and a drive to enhanced storage or networking functionality (this board has 2x2 802.11ac with MU-MIMO for example, most likely the Qualcomm Atheros chipset). So here enters this mini-ITX motherboard, which for all intents and purposes fits the standard for a gaming motherboard.
It also comes with RGB LEDs at the bottom, hence the AURA part of the name.
Elsewhere in the booth were a couple of new motherboards not aimed specifically at the gaming crowd.
The ASUS TUF Sabertooth Z170 S (or Mark S) is the Skylake white camouflage version of the limited edition Z97 Sabertooth Mark S (read our review of unit #0001 here), except this time the Z170 version will not be limited edition. As with other motherboards in the Z170 range, this gets the upgrades for Skylake chipsets – USB 3.1 in Type A/C formats, PCIe M.2 based storage and more PCIe lanes to do things with. The Mark S is part of the TUF line, which is ASUS’ 5-year warranty line (5-years in NA, other regions may differ) and the line is usually that these boards offer components with higher durability and/or more protection as a result. The color scheme is one that ASUS feels works will with the branding, and we have seen the Mark S boards used in a number of white system builds throughout the show.
Next to the Mark S was the Z170-PREMIUM, marking a return to the high end with the Premium name for ASUS. This sits above the Deluxe, peeling bits and pieces from the Formula and Extreme. This means four USB 3.1 ports on the rear, two of which I imagine are powered by Intel’s Alpine Ridge and should support Thunderbolt 3 when validated. There is also 3x3 802.11ac dual-band WiFi, dual Intel networking, onboard U.2, support for M.2, and an extended power delivery heatsink.
Typically the Premium line also comes with a box stuffed full of extras. Back with the Z77-Premium we saw a 32GB mSATA drive as part of that bundle, though we might instead see here either a U.2 cable or a pair of front panel USB 3.1 boxes to use up all the SATA Express connectors. It will be interesting to watch, and it certainly won’t come cheap.
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WhisperingEye - Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - link
Panzerknacker- I don't understand why you replied to a phone question with a router question.Xajel - Sunday, January 24, 2016 - link
The main reason behind this is that most consumer devices hardly sustain the 1Gb connection.. only some extreme consumers like heavy media servers at home that serves multi 4K stream...so for a consumer, 1Gb is enough, and there's no devices that can make use of 10Gb for the consumer...
Some advanced/enthusiast users uses a Link Aggregation connection as a backbone of their network ( NAS -> Switch <- HTPC/Main PC ) so these can serve multi streams in the same time without any drops... but that is rare as 1Gb is enough for most users already...
Maybe pro users, like pro video editing needs these 10Gb links, but it's already rare situation to see this in a home user, a person with the need for 10Gb ethernet is already using high-end workstations with professional systems.. so it's not a consumer oriented product any more...
Personally I thought about having 10Gb as a backbone for my home network just to be future proof.. but after looking again.. I found it too expensive, and I can make 2x 1Gb Link Aggregation which much less cost and still serve me well for few years a head ( NAS + HTPC + router + Switch all with LA connections )
Lieuchikaka - Thursday, June 2, 2016 - link
http://mavangvn.vn/ma-vang-dien-thoai/dien-thoai-s...Lieuchikaka - Thursday, June 2, 2016 - link
http://mavangvn.vn/ma-vang-dien-thoai/dien-thoai-s...rhx123 - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
Using their own standard instead of TB3 just screams of Vendor Lock-In, especially when TB3 can do 36gbps over an active cable.SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
According to Tom's, they actually require 2 type C cables too.Alexvrb - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
Your statement is ironic to me because thunderbolt is itself... a proprietary standard. For external graphics we really need a standardized "Type G" port or something that can provide all the bandwidth by itself. But that will probably never happen. For that matter, even a much tamer enclosure hosting "only" up to 150W GPUs would still be a huge boost for a laptop.nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
So... what are the implications of USB-C displacing HDMI and DisplayPort connectors? I know that it technically is DP over alternate mode, but it's clearly very popular. It seems like many new displays have it built in. Adaptive Sync? Latency? Would there be a penalty of some kind for sending video output through the USB bus instead of directly from the GPU?My only experience is with a first-generation USB display that sucked immense balls.
SirKnobsworth - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
It's just a multiplexer that sends the signal over unused pins. You only get two lanes (as opposed to the usual 4), but that's fine as long as you don't need 4k60.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - link
You can get 4 lanes of DP. It just uses up all the differential pairs, so you have to give up USB 3.x to get it (which is why DP 1.3 is going to be such a big deal).