Asus B85-pro gamer motherboard unsheathed. NO GOLD!!!!

April 20, 2014

The only thing I like about this board is the color. Kinda reminds you of MSI Gaming mobos, doesn't it?

First off, Intel should have narrowed down their chipset choices. Z87 for the enthusiasts (X79/X99 for the ultra high end consumer market), H87 as a everything-included, non-OC board alternative to Z87 for no-K CPUs, Q87 with full vPro support and otherwise just a H87, and then an H81 with some cut features but still sporting most of the features that 8 series has to offer. But then again, it's Intel. There would obviously exist a stupid B85 chipset that serves absolutely no purpose. For business users, Q87 seems like the way to go. Z87 is for the enthusiasts, all non-overclockers flock to the H87 and budget gamers go for the H81. Simple as that. Now that B85 is out, all these manufacturers are being retarded and making all these "Gaming" boards out of a pointless chipset. If they really cared to cater to business users with Xeon E3s, these manufacturers would have focused on building workstation boards with C222/C226 chipsets that support ECC, like Asus did with their WS C216 boards. Not that there's really any purpose to Q87 now that I think about it, because what's the point of spending H87 money on a non-ECC chipset? Beats me.

The problem is, these manufacturers are perpetuating this nonsense by outing all these B85 gamer boards with completely superfluous cooling and design. Aw come on, just because the VRM looks cool doesn't mean that B85 is a lot better than H81; it's still miles behind Z87. That being said, I'm going to grill Intel again for not releasing a lower-budget Z-series board like they did with the Z75 and Z77. Not that any major manufacturers had the brains to make any Z75 boards, but a lot of people want to OC on a budget. Not saying that the combination of low-end parts, VRMs, and cooling would be ideal for OCing, but it would be very welcome for builders on a budget.

Now that Intel has patched B85...not much to argue about here, have we?