Asus Announces 10 New Motherboards Based On Latest 100-Series Intel Chipsets
By Michael Justin Allen Sexton 2015-09-02T03:45:00Z
With the announcement of Intel's 100 series chipsets, OEMs are hard at work rolling out new motherboards for the LGA 1151 platform. Asus announced a total of 10 of these boards, which will fall into its Gaming Pro and Signature product lines.
In the Signature product line, Asus pushed out a total of eight boards, designed for durability and long-term use. Asus utilizes its 5X Protection II technology on these boards, and has claimed to use the finest components to provide long-term durability. It also included LANGuard, a hardware-level of protection against EMI and a claimed 2.5 times greater tolerance against power surges.
All of the motherboards in the Signature line also take advantage of a Digi+ power design, which is more efficient and gives better control than traditional analog power designs. Although these boards lack support for the USB 3.1 Gen 2 standard, some boards do feature a Type-C interface using the USB 3.1 Gen 1 protocol. Only one of the five motherboards in the Signature line that has a Type-C interface utilizes the USB 3.1 Gen 2 protocol with 10 Gbps data rates.
As these boards aren't targeted at the enthusiast community, Asus opted to use the DDR3 standard on the majority of these motherboards. As a relatively new memory standard, DDR4 is considerably more expensive than older DDR3 memory. Using DDR3 will reduce the overall cost of a system, but will also reduce system performance -- though how much performance you'll miss out on has yet to be determined.
H170-PRO
H170M-PLUS
H170I-PLUSD3
Q170M-C
Intel LGA 1151 for 6th-gen Intel Core i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium / Celeron processors
Intel H170 Express Intel Q170 Express
4x DIMM, max. 64 GB DDR4, 2133 MHz 4x DIMM, max. 64 GB DDR4, 2133 MHz 2x DIMM, max. 32 GB DDR3, 1600 MHz 4x DIMM, max. 64 GB DDR4, 2133 MHz
PCIe x16 Slots
1x PCIe3.0/2.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16 (x4) 1x PCIe3.0/2.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16 (x4) 1x PCIe3.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16
Output Support
HDMI, DVI, VGA HDMI, DVI, VGA DP, HDMI, DVI, VGA DP, HDMI, DVI, VGA
Realtek ALC887with ASUS audio features Realtek ALC887with ASUS audio features Realtek ALC887 Realtek ALC887
Gigabit LAN
1 (Realtek) 1 (Intel) 1 (Intel) Intel vPro
1 1 1 N/A
6x SATA 6 Gbit/s 6x SATA 6 Gbit/s 4x SATA 6 Gbit/s 6x SATA 6 Gbit/s
1 (PCIe 3.0 x4) up to 2280 1 (PCIe 3.0 x4) up to 2280 1 (both PCIe and SATA modes) up to 2280 N/A
N/A N/A 2x2 dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4/5 GHz) N/A
1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C 6x USB 3.0 Type-A 6x USB 2.0 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C 6x USB 3.0 Type-A 6x USB 2.0 8x USB 3.0 4x USB 2.0 10x USB 3.0 4x USB 2.0
U.2 Support
Compatible with Hyper Kit(purchased separately) Compatible with Hyper Kit(purchased separately) N N
Y Y N Y
B150-PROD3
B150M-PLUSD3
H110M-PLUSD3
Intel LGA 1151 for 6th-gen Intel Core i7/ i5 / i3 / Pentium / Celeron processors
Intel B150 Express Intel H110 Express
4x DIMM, max. 64 GB DDR3, 1866(OC) MHz 4x DIMM, max. 64 GB DDR3, 1866(OC) MHz 2x DIMM, max. 32 GB DDR3, 1866(OC) MHz 2x DIMM, max. 32 GB DDR3, 1600 MHz
1x PCIe3.0/2.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16 (x4) 1x PCIe3.0/2.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16 (x4) 1x PCIe3.0/2.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16
HDMI, DVI, VAG HDMI, DVI, VGA HDMI, DVI, VGA HDMI, DVI, VGA
Realtek ALC887 with ASUS audio features Realtek ALC887 with ASUS audio features Realtek ALC887 Realtek ALC887
1 (Realtek) 1 (Realtek) 1 (Realtek) 1 (Realtek)
N/A N/A N/A N/A
1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C 4x USB 3.0 Type-A 6x USB 2.0 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C 5x USB 3.0 Type-A 6x USB 2.0 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 3.0 6x USB 2.0
N/A N/A N/A N
N N N N
Asus announced just two motherboards in the enthusiast-oriented Pro Gaming product line. These motherboards are based on the H170 and B150 chipsets, and as such lack overclocking support.
The boards do have many features that you would expect to find on gaming motherboards, such as Asus's proprietary SupremeFX audio technology in conjunction with a Realtek ALC1150 codec. Both motherboards also support two USB 3.1 Gen 2 enabled ports, and both also utilize the faster DDR4 memory standard.
These motherboards only have two major differences between them. The H170 Pro Gaming board supports a single SATA Express connection and higher clocked DDR4 memory, while the B150 Pro Gaming D3 lacks SATA Express and is rated for slightly slower DDR4 RAM.
H170 PRO GAMING
B150 PRO GAMINGD3
Intel H170 Express Intel B150 Express
4xDIMM, max. 64 GB DDR4, 2133 MHz 4xDIMM, max. 64 GB DDR3, 1866(OC) MHz
1x PCIe3.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16 (x4) 1x PCIe3.0 x16 1x PCIe3.0 x16 (x4)
DP, HDMI, DVI, VGA HDMI, VGA
SupremeFX Realtek ALC1150  SupremeFX Realtek ALC1150
1 (Intel) 1 (Intel)
4x SATA 6 Gbit/s 6x SATA 6 Gbit/s
1 (both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA modes) up to 22110 1 (both PCIe and SATA modes) up to 22110
1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C 6x USB 3.0 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C 6x USB 3.0
Compatible with Hyper Kit (purchased separately) Compatible with Hyper Kit (purchased separately)
There is currently no word on pricing or release date for any of these systems.
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Nuckles_56 02 September 2015 04:19
It would have been nice if you had put what size each of the motherboards were as well
IInuyasha74 02 September 2015 05:57
Ordinarily I would have. These charts, however, are almost verbatim what we received from Asus. Form factor isn't listed, because Asus didn't tell us what form factors the motherboards were.
Ah, fair enough, I just assumed that they got overlooked rather than the fact that they actually weren't supplied
SteelCity1981 02 September 2015 15:12
see now i'm all confused does skylake's chipset support usb 3.1 gen1 only or usb 3.1 gen2
That is an excellent question, and you have the right to be confused. We did an article on this a few days ago. Long story short, USB 3.1 Gen 1 is essentially the same as USB 3.0. They just decided to rename it for some reason no one understands. USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the actually USB 3.1 which has been discussed over the last year, and the one with all the improved features.
So, yes it supports USB 3.1 Gen 1, no it doesn't support USB 3.1 Gen 2. Any board you see (here or otherwise) that has USB 3.1 Gen 2 at this time is using a separate controller chip connected via the chipsets PCI-E 3.0 lanes to the system.
MrAOK 02 September 2015 19:10
One of the boards are already being sold by Newegg. The H170-Pro is $129.
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