Conclusion
...but the £70 Vanguard, solid in every respect, is an interesting choice for those willing to spend £20 more than the rock-bottom motherboardsLooking towards the cheaper end of Intel's consumer pricing spectrum, the B85 chipset and dual-core (Haswell-based) Pentium and Core CPUs are a good fit for anyone contemplating a modern PC that, whilst perfectly competent, doesn't break the bank.
Asus has seen promise in the B85 chipset - which is a stripped-down version of the Z87 - and launched a premium board around it. Such a move seems counter intuitive on first glance, as the purpose of B85 is to offer a value option, but the £70 Vanguard, solid in every respect, is an interesting choice for those willing to spend £20 more than the rock-bottom motherboards.
The longer warranty, above-average BIOS, and good fan control makes us think this could well be a microATX board suited to powering a no-frills workhorse PC.
The Good
Longer warranty, excellent build quality
B85-beating features
Good BIOS, fan controlThe Bad
No overclocking potential
HEXUS.awards
Asus Vanguard B85
HEXUS.where2buy
The reviewed motherboard is available to purchase from Scan Computers.
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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
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