ASUS has revealed a new range of motherboards based on Intel’s Z87 chipset. The headline news about these new boards, as disclosed by the ASUS press release, is that the previous mainstream blue-accented colour scheme has been replaced by “a unique gold application on custom-designed heatsinks”. Unfortunately the NDAs imposed upon the press and also on ASUS prevent anything in the way of performance details or other metrics being revealed. However we do have some excellent photographs of the new ASUS range for your delectation.
Jackie Hsu, Corporate VP of Worldwide Sales at ASUS spoke about the company’s upcoming Z87 motherboard offerings “ASUS-branded motherboards keep evolving and always offer the gold standard in quality, performance, and durability. The new gold color scheme symbolizes this and our insistence on delivering the highest degree of innovation and reliability. ASUS motherboards are fully-featured and offer an attractive visual style for great system building experiences”. So the gold coloured heatsinks etc symbolise the firm’s gold standard of quality...
ASUS have chosen to complement the gold heatsinks, DIMM sockets and other connectors with a black PCB with silver accents. If the John Player Special racing car had a motherboard it would have looked like this. ASUS suggests to ‘computer interior designers’ that “the gold treatment on new motherboards promotes great-looking PC interiors with a two-tone color palette that works well with the primarily black designs of PC cases.”
However the design isn’t just eye candy, of course not... ASUS states that the twin design thrusts of form and function are satisfied by the “gold-imbued heatsinks on new ASUS Z87 motherboards”. The heatsinks use designs “inspired by the gears of handcrafted luxury timepieces”. The larger surface area created by the ridges and grooves of the cog-like designs offer “better heat dissipation and improved cooling”.
Updates not only the mainstream range
ASUS has also released some details about new upcoming motherboards in its The Ultimate Force (TUF) and Republic of Gamers (RoG) ranges. However much of these details are also design-centric. The TUF Gryphon is like a TUF Sabretooth board but in a micro-ATX form factor. These can optionally be supplemented by an “armour kit” which “improves thermal properties” and keeps dust off components. The upcoming Z87 RoG series includes the HERO, EXTREME and micro-ATX GENE models, aimed and custom designed with gamers in mind.
More thorough investigations of these motherboards will be forthcoming when Intel Haswell launches.
