ASUS "Marine Cool" motherboard

[Rob Williams]

We all know that ASUS likes to try new things with their products all of the time, and sometimes, they really do pull off what they're trying to do (Eee PC anyone?). Their latest attempt at uniqueness? Why, it's the "Marine Cool" motherboard... an offering that favors PC stability far more than overclocking. It features dark colors, robust heatsinks, and a brand-new ceramic back plate that's to aide in improved heat dissipation. According to one look, there's even a UPS placed in behind it, although I'm not sure how one could be so small, or what the full story is.

One of the most unique aspects of the board might very-well be the fact that it contains SO-DIMM slots, rather than standard desktop DIMM slots. Why they chose this route, I have no idea. The bandwidth on mobile memory isn't too bad, but the latencies are horrible. Hopefully we'll learn more about the board at CeBit though, which is where they'll be showing it off for the world to see.

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=568
http://www.overclock3d.net/news.php?/cpu_mainboard/asus_marine_cool_concept_motherboard/1

 

[Merlin]

Kewl Board
I'm looking toward a waterboard, fully water cooled on all the hot spots, built into the board

 

[Doomsday]

now thats a beauty!

 

[Merlin]

If they would just eliminate the PATA drive connectons and the floppy connections

 

[Kougar]

I was interested until I saw the SODIMMs... why!? Space isn't at a premium, they cost more versus regular memory regardless if DDR2 or DDR3, and as Rob says they have much higher latencies. Even having built-in memory shouldn't have necessitated this...

The ceramic backing to dissipate head and improved power delivery picked my interest the most, it will be interesting to see what features of this prototype make it into production motherboards.

 

[Doomsday]

uuh, where r the RAM slots?!?

oh SODIMMS!! and its has LG775

 

[Leshy]

looks damn good am gonna start saving from now

 

[crowTrobot]

Looks like ASUS are adding on to their TUF series military-class hardware, first with the Sabretooth now this.

 

[mudmarine]

More marketing mumbo jumbo. Ceramics by definition are insulators, both electrical and thermal.

 

[Kougar]

This was last year's proof-of-concept board, it never actually saw production although concepts from it were used in other ASUS boards.