"ASUS motherboards get the Thunderbolt treatment"

[Brandon J.F.]

This may interest some of you...

ASUS motherboards get the Thunderbolt treatment

I love me some new hardware. I don't read Chinese the best, if at all, but what I gather from these pictures and a bad Google Translate is that ASUS has released two new motherboards that support Intel's super fast Thunderbolt port. The products in question are the P8Z77-V PREMIUM and P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT and ASUS claims they have been Intel certified.

The boards appear to be ATX standard based and the P8Z77-V PREMIUM features 4 PCIe-x16 slots and 2 PCIe-x1 slots. It also comes with dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. Additionally, it features an mSATA SSD for Smart Response and a front USB 3 expansion module. These boards are both, as the name implies, using the Intel Z77 chipset that was released in conjunction with Ivy Bridge.

The second board, the P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT, sports the same 2 PCIe-x1 slots with only 3 PCIe-x16 expansion ports. It features a single Gigabit Ethernet port and DVI, VGA, and HDMI video connectors. It does not come with an mSATA SSD, nor does it feature a DisplayPort output. Prices are unknown at this time. More as it comes.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/24207/asus_motherboards_get_the_thunderbolt_treatment/index.html

[Vico Martin]

USB3 for Mac and now this...
Is like one of those rare comics that mix characters.

thanks for post.

Vico.

[Grant H]

No hotswapping though afaik?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

...or it could be that Intel has incorporated USB3 in their latest chipsets and is now also incorporating the Thunderbolt host controller as well. All the motherboard makers have to do is wire up the connectors. Well Thunderbolt is a tad more complicated than that, but not much.

There are about a dozen different notebook PCs with Thunderbolt that will hit the market over the next 20 to 60 days. Thunderbolt-equipped Ivy Bridge motherboards are rolling off the line now too. By the end of the year, few PCs will be sold without Thunderbolt -- just the high-end desktop/workstation class ones mostly as they were just refreshed without adding TB. TB will come to the Xeon platform with the next chipset iteration in 2014. Of course, it can always be added separate of the north bridge bundle as Apple has been doing since its release.

Within the next 12 to 18 months, the only ports people are going to care about on new PCs will be USB3 and Thunderbolt.

[Kevin Marshall]

Well damn. And here I just finished configuring a tower...back to the drawing board?

Side note: is there any expectation as to how much of a premium the Thunderbolt-epuipped motherboards will command over their non-Thunderbolt counterparts?

[Vico Martin]

these Asus motherboards with Xeon E5 support and TB?, will be even more tempting for the market, for sure.