Wednesday, October 27th 2021
ASUS Reveals its Intel Z690 Motherboards
ASUS' upcoming Z690 motherboards have been revealed and the company has put its product pages as well as posted additional details of most of its upcoming boards, which gives us a good look at where they're heading with the Z690-series. As mentioned before, ASUS has something like 30 different SKUs, so expect to spend some time to go over all the different models.
We're not going to spend too much time on the details right now and we suggest you head over to the source links and read up on the nitty gritty bits there. A few things to point out though is that ASUS appears to have worked on its own memory overclocking standard called AEMP, which is said to handle memory that lacks XMP profiles, which implies that Intel might not have had time to work with memory manufacturers to get XMP ready for DDR5. ASUS' ROG Maximus and ProArt motherboards feature dual PCIe 5.0 slots, whereas all other models only feature one, albeit obviously a single x16 or dual x8 slots. Some boards will feature Thunderbolt 4 and ASUS has even put a front connector on some of those, although we're not sure how that will work in terms of case compatibility.
Some models also feature what ASUS calls a Q-Release button, which makes it easier to release the graphics card latch with the help of a button at the front of the motherboard that is connected to a wire that pulls the latch down. ASUS also points out that despite the fact that they've added LGA-115x/1200 mounting holes for coolers, in addition to the LGA-1700 mounting holes, not all coolers will be compatible with the previous generation mounting holes due to the lower height of the socket. Finally ASUS is throwing in a free month of Adobe Creative Cloud with some of its motherboards, oddly enough not the ProArt, but rather its ROG boards.
Sources:
ASUS Z690 motherboard guide, ASUS LGA-1700 motherboard landing page
We're not going to spend too much time on the details right now and we suggest you head over to the source links and read up on the nitty gritty bits there. A few things to point out though is that ASUS appears to have worked on its own memory overclocking standard called AEMP, which is said to handle memory that lacks XMP profiles, which implies that Intel might not have had time to work with memory manufacturers to get XMP ready for DDR5. ASUS' ROG Maximus and ProArt motherboards feature dual PCIe 5.0 slots, whereas all other models only feature one, albeit obviously a single x16 or dual x8 slots. Some boards will feature Thunderbolt 4 and ASUS has even put a front connector on some of those, although we're not sure how that will work in terms of case compatibility.
26 Comments on ASUS Reveals its Intel Z690 Motherboards
With all the extra metal and plastic covering the board, I can see why they did it.
www.asus.com/us/site/motherboards/Intel-Alder-Lake-Z690-H670-B660/websites/download/ASUS_Z690_Full_Specs.pdf
We have so many interfaces now that the ATX standard was never meant for and it's kind of hampering the good old PC.
M.2 is a great example of a standard that works great in something like a notebook, but less so on a desktop, as it either eats up space where other interfaces used to be, or it often blocks the other interfaces from being used, if a heatsink is attached to the NVMe drive.
We're using kind of cobbled together connectors for the front panel ports on cases and poorly shielded cables in some instances, which really shouldn't be the case, but has happened due to lack of standards to a degree.
The ATX PSU form factor is not really fit for purpose any longer either, but once again, we make do and the manufacturers work around it with custom solutions, which is far from ideal.
I can't see things changing any time soon, as even Intel's 12V only initiative was shot down by the board makers, although I'm not sure how much sense it makes for DIY PCs.
This is I guess part of the reason why Asus did their DIMM.2 and have stacked M.2 slots on their mini-ITX boards. The latter seems to be far from ideal in terms of cooling though.
I'm not a product or mechanical designer but I appreciate good design and ATX is just bad. BTX is a bit before my time to have any meaningful context but yeah, ATX is like one step away from being held together with bail wire and chewing gum. It really is time for clean slate form factor design or at the very least inject some new design ideas into cases and motherboards.
- They brought back the Strix-G, I guess mATX isn't quite completely dead yet. Last gen relegated the Strix-G to B560 (lmao). No Gene though, sadly, even on such a big launch, and no PCIe slot release button on Strix-G. 10 USB ports, too.
- ITX board looks like it finally gets both Clear CMOS and BIOS Flashback on the rear I/O, albeit not the nice buttons and no POST code (Strix I guess). And more USB ports than Z590.
The two ITX boards so far both prove that form factor is just a lame excuse to cut down on rear I/O. But HOLY HELL that Strix ITX board is not going to like bigger air coolers. I'm not gonna pretend like I know what's going on in lowest layer below the audio layer. I take that back, maybe this board does need proper OC buttons and a rear IO POST code for the price it's probably gonna command.Nice, asus gives mounting plate options so older back plates can be used instead of shopping for a new one for 1700 holes :cool:
No other manufactures are doing it that I've seen so far.
Since seeing this there really is no good reason to change mounting hole pattern
z690 chips are not any bigger than 2066 socket chips which by the way have a much better cooler mount on it no back plate nonsense lol