Asus Showcases Marine Cool Concept Motherboard
The stunning board, which is obviously aimed at high-end gamers, will be on display in the company's booth next week. One of the main features Asus will be marketing is its new backplate that boasts a "micro-porous ceramic" technology, which supposedly delivers quicker heat dissipation and should also improve the structural integrity of the entire board. By being able to dissipate heat more efficiently, it will also be able to handle overclocking more easily. Gamers, have we got your attention yet?
Another standout feature is the board's use of two SO-DIMM memory slots, replacing the traditional, desktop-grade DIMM slots. This move enables it to save space for other components (or airflow, we guess), but it will force you to think about your future RAM purchases more intently. We should know more about this board in the coming days, and hopefully Asus will decide to move it beyond the prototype stage and into production. If there were ever a mobo screaming for a clear case to house it in, this would be it.
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pretty nice board. love the layout... |
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What is this? Mobos with a nice color palette? It will never fly |
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That's interesting... however, I'm seriously doubting the SO-DIMM specification as a good idea. I'm pretty sure SO-DIMMs would be less effective with overclocking, which appears to be the point of the board based on its design. Of course, I could be wrong... |
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I dont know about the SO-Dimms layout thats a wait and see but the ceramic and the board layout looks great just need Dave and Marco to get 2 to test out one for them and one for me!!!! LOL |
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I'm going all stealth in my new design - Whats its radar signature like? |
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*TWO* SO-DIMM slots? Uhm... is this an i7 board? |
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It's actually a S754 board 3vi1.....break out your A64! :) That is very weird though if they truly ship with only 2x SO-DIMM slots...I don't know if I would want to try to find 2 x 3GB sticks of RAM or 2 x 4GB... |
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I'll be the odd man out and say that the SO-DIMMs are the thing about this board that makes the most sense. If every manufacturer would switch to them, it would drive down the price of memory for smaller form-factor devices and give us more compatibility. Of course, this is coming from a guy who tells people DDR3 was the third installment in the Dance Dance Revolution series. |
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The article doesn't mention it, but that big dark section seen on the back of the motherboard is a lithium battery they say is for "providing extra power during unexpected blackout!" I say: "What good is a battery on the motherboard if my monitor is dead?". I think a battery is a silly thing to integrate onto the motherboard when anyone that actually wants that type of protection will have an *easily replaceable* external UPS anyway. The flower-like section on the motherboard is integrated failover memory that's supposed to let you continue to operate even if your installed memory fails. I think it's also more trouble than it's worth: newbish installers will install incompatible memory and wonder why the system is only seeing a fraction of their RAM. And, I can't see Windows gracefully shutting down when it tries to access failed RAM and the failover memory doesn't contain a mirror image of what was on the stick that failed. I can't see this thing ever going into production. |
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Ironically, I had a 10 second power outage after posting this. Apparently, Asus controls the power company. |
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