Hardware Asus LGA1155 Motherboard Preview

that's gigabyte blue =]

 

@ Jipa - Design a better motherboard or offer up constructive ideas....I'd place cash that the ASUS engineers have more knowledge in this area than pretty much all of us here in the forums (Bindi aside!)

The "Tactical Vest" does actually work for the scenario's it's designed to work in - Cases with low air flow that are under strenuous conditions, think server rooms and the like. The vest *is* removeable as far as I know so far.

EFI is really really nice to use and is a massive step on from BIOS, functionally it's pretty much the same but it's a nicer experience.

Remember that it's innovation that has allowed the technology to get to where it is today....without innovation none of us would have PC's!

 

"Design a better motherboard"... Touché of the year, eh? Hardly.

Yeah there's not really much point in arguing with an Asus-employee of whether or not a new, fancy feature makes sense or not, is there? Lets just wait for the actual price and reviews. Until then it remains as a silly gimmick in my books.

 

huh well I was wrong about the TUF, I thought it was a pre-insylated board for people doing phase or LN2 cooling >.< I really dont see how it helps cool, you think it would only build heat... hmm will have to see how it works out. If it works well I hope a bulldozer version will be introduced.

 

finally a motherboard with a color combination that would match some Noctua fans and heat sink

 

You are too picky

 

The problem with EFI is that we'll start seeing the horrid user interfaces there are in motherboard software, IN THE BIOS.
I hope they have proper UI engineers for this...

 

I guess Chipset Heatsinks are really just for show these days. As long as you have a little metal on them, you can shape them however you please... Like they are trying to make motherboards into modern art fixtures.

Also, taking the 'extreme' boards out of the picture, I'm not really a fan of the Asus budget color set. The blues and whites look fine on a Gigabyte since everything is blue and white, but the Asus boards are actually this off shade of Brown for the PCB, which is super ugly... Unfortunately my new Asus 6870 has the same damn color. How much more expensive is a deep, rich black Asus?

 

You mean like this? I know it's a Biostar app, but it immediately came to mind.



EFI is obviously the way to go but I think I'd prefer old school menu style over the likes of that.

 

Don't like the way it looks? Mod it!

 

It's a good thing you aren't claiming to represent ASUS in that post! Not exactly the best attitude for convincing people.

That aside, I'm a little confused as to the vest's purpose. It's being sold as a piece for low air flow servers such as you say, but then I look at the article and see it being used with a fancy gaming GPU. As the article notes, what gamer uses a cooler with the correct orientation to make the vest work? And what happens when someone inevitiable uses the wrong kind of cooler and leaves the vest on?

Seems like some very risky business.

 

Me likey, me wanty!

 

There is a removable hatch in the vest that allows a fan to be mounted. So it does improve cooling, the same way a gpu shroud would- by forcing air intake at one end to blow over the whole pcb.

And triple channel ram? 1155 is a replacement to 1156. Dual channel ram and a limited number of pcie lanes. Lga 2011 and sandy bridge e will have tri (or maybe even quad) channel ram and 32+ pcie lanes.

 

I have to agree, It's Hideous, the extra plastic I'd rather not have, Besides lose a screw? Have fun trying to find It and that would be an adventure, After doing that once the cover would be so in the trash. It's an interesting idea, I just don't think Asus thought It through with this happening.

 

Well I have to agree with VK to some degree, we do always promote a constructive and mindful community here - it's what brings people to the forums - and without seeing actual reviews or experiences, Jipa assumes it cooks the components underneath? If he weren't a longtime member who we know, it would be considered a trollish comment.

People have done it before in mods and it's worked fine, even without ground-up design considerations. The fact is nothing on a motherboard, apart from MOSFETs and PCH, gets that hot any more. Companies heatsink things to make it look faster.

Having seen the test facilities available to them out here in Taiwan, and millions of development dollars ASUS people put into their products (it costs tens of millions per board design, which is why we're only left with a few mobo companies these days because they need to ship LOTS of boards to get the cash back) - just like Gigabyte and MSI for that matter - we are past the point of gross ****-ups. It's less the fact that it'll cook stuff underneath, more "what does the TUF series stand for and where is it actually needed?" It's server/workstation but it's not a WS board or rack friendly? 'The Ultimate Force' - where's Ross Kemp? The marketing is towards consumers but Asus is telling us it's serious business. I don't really think Asus really knows to be honest - it's a product without a market, and that's why it feels gimmicky. Add in marketing terms like 'tactical jacket' which are seen as funny rather than positive, and it's a recipe for people assuming the worst.

 

Yeah sorry if I came out "trollish", but this ^. Also you say "motherboard components don't get too hot any more" and yet this is designed to help cool those exact parts? Also it's advertised for low airflow scenarios, but you'd imagine it takes quite a fan to push air through a gap of ~1 cm all the way to the lower edge of the board? Also in the graphical demonstration of how it works, the cooling air seems to happily breeze through the memory sticks... And who uses a blow-down cooler on a performance build anyway?

Overall it just looks, well, gimmicky. But maybe I really am just too quick and harsh at throwing in my 2 cents.

 

It's designed for extreme environments though: is your PC an 85C hot box with next to zero airflow? Similarly, the jacket holds heat IN, in sub-zero exposures, I'd imagine. For 99% of PC users it'll do nothing, but then again, how many people have bought super-OC motherboards with 'LN2 mode' and whatever before??

The ceramic heatsink material doesn't require that much airflow at all because of it's super high surface area and thermal transfer properties are better than the aluminium commonly used.

However I do certainly understand these points you make:

I agree on the demo - Asus should have put that together because it's a completely new concept that's hard to believe.

And the blow-down cooler, again, yes, but it just goes further with the statement: who really is this board aimed at, Asus?? High performance users already have RoG and workstation people have the WS series.

I actually think the tactical jacket would work better with the RoG Formula series if it were built for style only. Black PCB, black-smoked cover on top with flashes of dark red highlights on the heatsinks between. Actually I would love to hide all the messy PCB components for a really clean looking build.

 

Memory on LGA1155 board

Is it possible to use triple channel 6GB DDR3 1600 RAM (3*2GB) originally purchased for LGA1366 socket board on these boards (even if I need to add one more similar stick to fill all the four memory slots) or are they going to be useless if I want to move to LGA 1155?

Thanks.
VKK

 

Due to the recent presentation of Sandy bridge, it is nice to see these not-so-old comments go wrong

True at the time...then the Sabertooth X58 got an award for best board...
If that's anything to go by, these "extreme situation" boards have become very desirable for gamers (and are a lot cheaper than the ROG ones)

Again, who'd have thought Sandy Bridge would be dual-channel? Not me

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the P/H67 Mobo-reviews.

 

Erm? What's wrong about my comment?