Wednesday, March 4th 2009
ASUS Marine Cool Motherboard Concept Becomes Official
Following the first news we heard of ASUS' new concept motherboard, they have now released an official press release, including some close-up imagery of the new cooling solution. The odd "backplate" to the rear of the board is in fact a built in UPS (uninterruptible power supply) through the use of a polymer battery. The board also features built in memory to guarantee a successfull boot in the event of installing faulty or incompatible RAM. Then of course is the new cooling solution utilizing a combination of ceramincs and metals which ASUS say doubles the cooling efficiency. The official press release follows.
ASUS Marine Cool Concept Motherboard Utilizes Breakthrough Innovations in Materials-Ceramic and Metal-for Exceptional Cooling
ASUS, the world's leading producer of motherboards, has unveiled its new Marine Cool concept motherboard. Eschewing traditional materials, this motherboard boasts a revolutionary technology-dubbed the Ceramic-Metal Thermal Module-that utilizes two different materials (ceramics and metals) to double cooling efficiency and thus allow it to work even in the most demanding of usage environments like high humidity and heat. Sporting a color scheme with gun-metal gray and metallic military-green highlights, together with a heatsink styled after a rugged military armored vehicle (symbolizing sturdiness and reliability), the overall design exudes a feeling of military-grade technology and reliability. Additionally, this motherboard features Onboard UPS-a built-in polymer battery for extra backup power and a server-standard Failover Memory design to help sustain system boot-up.
Aerospace-grade Thermal Dissipating Technology
The ASUS Marine Cool motherboard features a unique design that incorporates advanced thermal innovations in the utilization of ceramics and metals. On the front of the motherboard, a metal heatpipe module provides exceptional heat transference and dissipation for core components. Located on the back of the motherboard and set flush with the PCB, the Ceramic Backplate makes full use of a revolutionary micro-porous ceramic technology to provide a larger surface area-helping to effectively convey heat from the motherboard PCB and deliver highly effective heat dissipation. Together, this revolutionary thermal design is able to improve thermal efficiency by up to 2 times!
Onboard UPS for Sustained Power and Protection
The Marine Cool motherboard also features Onboard UPS-a built-in polymer battery that serves as an extra backup power supply that activates when a power failure is detected. This helps to avert damage dealt to onboard components, loss of critical files and data corruption due to inconsistent and fluctuating power caused during unexpected blackouts.
Failover Memory
To provide even further support for operation sustainability, the server-standard Failover Memory design on the Marine Cool motherboard utilizes built-in memory to help continue system boot-up in the event of errors to add-on memory. When the PC is switched on, Failover Memory guarantees that the system will boot, regardless of incompatible or faulty memory.
Source:
ASUS
ASUS, the world's leading producer of motherboards, has unveiled its new Marine Cool concept motherboard. Eschewing traditional materials, this motherboard boasts a revolutionary technology-dubbed the Ceramic-Metal Thermal Module-that utilizes two different materials (ceramics and metals) to double cooling efficiency and thus allow it to work even in the most demanding of usage environments like high humidity and heat. Sporting a color scheme with gun-metal gray and metallic military-green highlights, together with a heatsink styled after a rugged military armored vehicle (symbolizing sturdiness and reliability), the overall design exudes a feeling of military-grade technology and reliability. Additionally, this motherboard features Onboard UPS-a built-in polymer battery for extra backup power and a server-standard Failover Memory design to help sustain system boot-up.
Aerospace-grade Thermal Dissipating Technology
The ASUS Marine Cool motherboard features a unique design that incorporates advanced thermal innovations in the utilization of ceramics and metals. On the front of the motherboard, a metal heatpipe module provides exceptional heat transference and dissipation for core components. Located on the back of the motherboard and set flush with the PCB, the Ceramic Backplate makes full use of a revolutionary micro-porous ceramic technology to provide a larger surface area-helping to effectively convey heat from the motherboard PCB and deliver highly effective heat dissipation. Together, this revolutionary thermal design is able to improve thermal efficiency by up to 2 times!
Onboard UPS for Sustained Power and Protection
The Marine Cool motherboard also features Onboard UPS-a built-in polymer battery that serves as an extra backup power supply that activates when a power failure is detected. This helps to avert damage dealt to onboard components, loss of critical files and data corruption due to inconsistent and fluctuating power caused during unexpected blackouts.
Failover Memory
To provide even further support for operation sustainability, the server-standard Failover Memory design on the Marine Cool motherboard utilizes built-in memory to help continue system boot-up in the event of errors to add-on memory. When the PC is switched on, Failover Memory guarantees that the system will boot, regardless of incompatible or faulty memory.
50 Comments on ASUS Marine Cool Motherboard Concept Becomes Official
And there isn't anything that says you can't put SO-DIMMs in a high performance computer. They perform the same as their desktop brothers, and use less power, perhaps even overclocking pretty well without the need for heatspreaders.
Edit: wait no its not but it isn't hugely expensive.
www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?&groupid=701&catid=8&subid=1264&sortby=priceAsc
www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?&groupid=701&catid=8&subid=936&sortby=priceAsc
OCing So-dimms without voltage adjustment is well... not gonna happen. i.e. youre not gonna get DDR2 so-dimms running at 1066 DDR2... in addition, the failover ram will be a possible bottleneck / source of problems. And i dont need a friggin battery in my motherboard since i have a UPS.
Hopefully it will not do what some other battery's done in the past too BOOM.
P55 w/ CFX and SLI and 2 x16 2.0 ports.
Better power circuitry/less vdroop
Quiet, active cooling on NB for Ocing, or even a place to attach an optional 80MM fan.
Better PCB layouts.
Better Raid controllers.
Powersaving features that are overclocker-friendly
Things we don't need:
Batteries on motherboards
Failover memory
Ceramic decorations for heatsinks
Sodimms on desktop boards
And who said anything about there being no voltage adjustment, or for that matter, who said anything about this being an overclocking board? Seems like it is more along the lines of a power saving board, something that overclocking tends to clash with.No, those are things you need and don't need. You are not everyone.
power savings can be achieved better by undervoling desktop ram which is more flexible than SODIMM...
The battery is just plain useless in its current form- anyone who wants redundancy will have to buy a UPS anyway, with or without the motherboard battery.
the only thing that might be even remotely useful is failover memory, but then again its not necessary and makes memory choices less flexible.
Whatever this board offers, in any regard, can be trumped by another solution (minus the cool looking heatsinks). It brings absolutely nothing that is of any real use to the table.
Asus ARE trend setters, and i give them 10 points for innovation and bloating. I give them 10 points for looks on their higher end boards, but 7 for performance.
Running everything standard, there is little to no difference between the rams ability. If your a heavy overclocker thats majorly concerned with timmings and bandwith then your probably in a catch 22 phase of your life.
I really like the idea of the UPS on the back of the board, and am really interested in installing one of these boards because i want to see its thickness and how its going to bolt onto the motherboard etc etc. I dont need the UPS either because i too have one, but every product released doesnt need to be purchased, so if you dont 'friggin need a UPS, you probably dont 'friggin need a PC.
If i dont need a ups i dont need a pc :wtf:? Those two things are not correlated... I think this board looks cool because of the colors and heastink, but its not a trend setter IMO.
If you like to buy motherboards to see their thickness then by all means. enjoy :toast:
2 Ram slots probably isnt enough, and i too wouldnt consider it enough for my personal use. But taking into account someone thats about to upgrade or whatever, im sure 2 slots is ample (2 x 4Gb).
The relativity in my eyes between the UPS and the PC in your case, is that you already have both. You stated you dont need a UPS because you own one, using that logic one might state that you also own a pc and dont need one of them either.
Turning the ugly heatsinks into military vehicle looking plates isnt the most efficient idea, and granted it does look good, its most likely going to be touching other hardware but it looks awesome.
I dont think Asus were the first to have the backplate UPS and i dont think they will be the only ones to use this infuture.
Trend setters tend to exploit something created by someone else until it catches on. One things for sure when it comes to trend setting is that only time and sales will tell . . . .
I do prefer this colour scheme over fluro yellow and green, but i dont buy boards because of its thickness, i buy them because they were the best at the time of purchase in accordance to the rest of my hardware.