ASUS Booth Tour at CES 2016: 10G Switches, External GPU Dock, USB-C Monitor and more

ASUS 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.