CeBIT 2009 - ASUS Marine Cool
by Gary Key on February 25, 2009 10:22 PM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
CeBIT 2009 officially starts next Tuesday, but we already have some early coverage from cold and wet Hannover, Germany. ASUS has given us an early look at their Marine Cool design concept. Just like concept cars at the major automobile shows, this particular motherboard is meant to introduce new design ideas into a rather "me too" market.
ASUS was rather coy about what design and layout aspects will eventually make their way into future motherboard products. However, one major design change we expect to see in upcoming boards is the new back plate that utilizes "micro-porous ceramic" technology to dissipate heat quicker and to provide structural integrity to the motherboard.
The new heatpipe system also improves chipset and PWM cooling compared to shipping products, while the layout receives a few tweaks for usability. We are not too wild about the SO-DIMM slots for a performance oriented system, but they do save real estate space and perform well on mainstream systems. The heatsink design and technology behind it (cannot comment further, yet) is certainly an item that we liked. In fact, the design reminded us of a few design elements from Space:1999 (yes, some of us are that old).
ASUS is interested in your opinions, so leave your thoughts in our comments section. In the meantime, we will have more information about the Marine Cool technology in upcoming coverage. auf Wiedersehen!
Updated Press Information from ASUS - "ASUS MARINE COOL Motherboard: Revolutionary Design and Advanced Innovations to Deliver the Ultimate in Stability and Durability - The ASUS MARINE COOL is a conceptual motherboard that addresses the most demanding of usage scenarios. The front features a metal heat-pipe module to provide exceptional heat transference and dissipation for core components. Set flush on the back of the PCB, the backplate makes full use of micro-porous ceramic technology to provide a larger surface area—facilitating heat away from the PCB for highly effective thermal dissipation. Together, these revolutionary designs improve heat dissipation by up to 2 fold. The ASUS MARINE COOL also features an on-board uninterruptible power supply (UPS)—a built-in polymer battery (gray portion of the backplate) that averts damage from unexpected blackouts. Furthermore, built-in server-standard Failover Memory (under the flower shaped object) guarantees system boot, regardless of incompatible or faulty memory."
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gomakeit - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I'm not sure the flattened configuration actually save real estate given the fact that the heat sinks of motherboard chips and cooler will more than likely be taller than regular memory modules. Plus it limits the number of DIMM slot a motherboard can have. So I'd have to vote a no on that DIMM slot configuration.Other than that I really like the board. Given that enthusiasts are using larger and larger cooler for overclocking, a more rigid motherboard is definitely needed (think cooler master v10 and v12).
Any time frame that the concept will (if at all) hit the market?
zshift - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I don't know about the rest of you out there, but I love the colors, makes it seem like a real high end classy motherboard (not sure what a classy mobo is, but this sure feels like one). The heatsink design is cool too, but the southbridge area looks like it has 2 heatsinks, not sure whats up with that or whats under that behemoth of a heatsink. also, i agree with one of the other commenters that the pci slots and pci express slots seem way too far away from the edge of the mobo, bu that might just be an optical illusion with the capacitors there (really odd why those are there). And I have to disagree with the SO-DIMM, IDE, and Floppy. GET RID OF EM!. so-dimm has never been a performance part, and this with heatspreaders are always way too thick, they look like they would be touching the traces on this mobo. and only two slots when so-dimm is still relatively expensive for 4 gb compared to regular ddr2/3. seems like the smaller scondary heatsink near the southbridge area is blocking the use of regular ram modules.overall the design looks great, but i wanna see a price tag on this. only 2 PCIex16 slots means its not a high end board, but this looks like its gonna cost a lot.
and btw, wheres the shot of the backplane ports? that would be a big indication of what this sucker has to offer.
Burrich - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
The backplate idea is very intriguing. Matched up with a modular power supply and an appropriate case it can bring another dimension to case modding. Most people would hide the backside of their motherboard but this could allow for users to have a very minimal motherboard try (like rails?) and have a window showing the backside.I have to agree with others in the belief that this would be targeted at the higher tier of users and the amount of RAM slots would be an large disadvantage. I know the Gigabyte X58 board, the UD3R I believe, only has 4 slots memory slots. As a person in the process of building an i7 setup that currently has me looking at other boards. Make no bones about it, the market might disappear if there are only two SO-DIMM memory slots.
Sagath - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
If this is ultra-high end, and I assume it is;Why is it limited to ram that wont Overclock very well?
Why the 'expensive' NB/VRM/SB heatsinks that everyone will just remove for water setups?
Why the Battery UNDER the gfx card in slot one with no onboard reset option? Not very OC friendly
Why the legacy options like IDE? Please, this is 2009, not 1989. IMO its time to retire PS2 and IDE/Floppy connectors people, jesus.
On that same note; Hows the backpane? Is ASUS holding out or can we get a pic of that up too Gary?
Are those dip switches in the upper right next to the floppy connector, and bottom right (looks like it says CLRTC)? If they are pwr/reset, please ignore my comments about onboard reset and crappy battery location ;)
I mean, it seems like this board is more designed to be used 'as is' in a fancy ass case...Which is cool untill the $500 price tag is released. Also, as a previous poster was saying about the power connectors; Most high end cases now put the PSU on the bottom. This is a better place for so many reasons. I would imagine this is also why ASUS moved most of the PSU connectors (and rightfully so) to the bottom.
But, and I'll bite on this, it sure is purdy! ;)
npp - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I find the idea downright stupid... This board *IS* going to be insanely expensive (current ASUS high-end boards aren't cheap by any means to start with), and I can't imagine someone buying a product like this just to be stuck with paltry 800Mhz SO-DIMMs... Truth be told, s775 systems don't benefit that greatly from higher speed memory (nor do s1366 anyway, but they can't be ran with "slow" memory to show the difference :), but an overclocker doesn't care much about that. People want high frequencies, that's it.As for the colors, cooling and that fancy backplate... I can imagine ASUS trumpeting how revolutionary they are, while in fact there's nothing so special about them anyway. Simply another way to shave off some $$ from eager enthusiasts - just like the "2 ounces of copper" b*s* from Gigabyte... Shiny polish here and there, but at the end of the day it's all the same stuff.
velis - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Is it just me or are those expansion slots really moved too much into the interior? Just how am I supposed to plug a card into that?And what's with all those capacitors in front of expansion slots?
Also the CPU area seems too cluttered. Not all heat sinks will fit in there.
Otherwise the board looks impressively classy, high quality and everything.
velis - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Eh, forgot a few things... (what's with Edit comment feature, btw?)Since this is obviously a high-end VERY expensive MB, the main chipset cooling block should be modular as in allowing to replace with a waterblock.
And I'd also very much like them to finally move the connectivity brackets (internal USB, firewire, front panel connectors) to the front side (the one that has SATA, IDE and power connectors now. It's insanely hard to hide the cabling when connectors are at the bottom.
The power connector could also be moved to the top of the board as that's where the PSU usually is. Also I can't see the 4-pin power connector, but if it's there, it should be near the power connector as PSUs usually have these connectors "together"
Is that gray / yellow thing the box? It looks great, but in the end it will more or less just be tossed away, so why spend too much money on it?
strikeback03 - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I'm pretty sure the gray/yellow thing is the ceramic cooling plate on the back of the motherboard that was mentioned. Looks like it has the right holes for mounting and holding a CPU cooler.punjabiplaya - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Interesting concept with the so-dimms. I'd love to see if there's a performance hit (I have no idea if there would be). However, whenever Asus makes a board like this, they are insanely expensive. Unless you Asus guys want to give me one at RogCon...Jynx980 - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I know it's a very early build, but make sure you get some colors on that thing. It looks like it's made out of chocolate. Even though your in the land of chocolate. Mmmmm land of chocolate.