News - ASUS ROG's first AMD FM2+ motherboard ships this month

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The Crossblade Ranger utilises the usual ROG trimmings like Gigabit Ethernet and LANGuard.

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Be gone with USB 2 and just replace everything with USB 3 - cross compatible anyway.

I don't see the point in having USB2 anymore. It annoys me having it on the front of cases as well as USB3..

A lot of software won't work out of the box with USB3. While things like Windows 8 usually works, Windows 7 is much more questionable without drivers (which the installer doesn't always offer) and then you've got many out-of-Windows offerings (FOG, image boot disks, etc) which don't always allow out of the box support, so some legacy support is required.

There really is no need for USB3 across the board - how many external hard/solid state drives are you planning on using concurrently?

Front ports should be USB3, and I'd be happy with USB3 on the backplane, but currently you have to allow for a couple of USB2 (or at the very least sold legacy support through the BIOS).

'Sonic Radar II' - or 'cheating' as it's more commonly known LOL ;-)

Just a shame there's no decent cpu's to slap in such a nice sounding board :(

People, this is 2014. USB2 is stupid now. Go the MSi Way and have it all USb3, like the Gaming 7.

As this_is_gav wrote above, there are multiple usage scenarios where USB 3.0-only is simply not viable. There are certain audio interfaces that not only will bug out when plugged on USB 3.0 ports but can actually go full BSOD on an unsuspecting user. The idea of having motherboards with only USB 3.0 and a BIOS switch that could (ideally) select port speed individually would indeed be quite welcome, though, as it would provide ideal flexibility for all users.

At this point in time, only users who are fully aware they have no compatibility dependencies can afford to use USB 3.0 alone. For everyone else, a mix of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 is very much recommended.