ASUS ROG announces B150 Pro Gaming/Aura motherboards

[HEXUS]

Use the money you've saved on this to buy a better graphics card, suggests ASUS.

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[cheesemp]

Hmmm. Am I the only one that would rather have the better chipset with no frills (colour, LEDs or water cooling support)? I've always prioritised motherboards that way (even if I can only afford mid level boards!)

edit: Thinking about it - I guess this is the equivalent of a 1.0 'Sports' hatchback - All show and no go...

[Plasmastorm]

I've used Asus ROG boards for my last 3 builds but mainly because of solid overclocking performance. Most of the features on them I don't need/use tbh

[jim]

The Z97-Pro Gamer was a fantastic board, great features for the price.

It is something that they were looking increasingly at, starting to bring premium features down to the budget boards (I think there was a B85 Gamer, potentially?), but there was never much fanfare around them. At some level though, bling will always sell.

[aniilv]

I've used Asus ROG boards for my last 3 builds but mainly because of solid overclocking performance. Most of the features on them I don't need/use tbh

its b150 - no overclocking... dunno whats the point of this mobo

[iworrall]

Fewer PCIe lanes? Single GPU only then. No thanks.

[Jowsey]

Surely this is a really positive move, right?

I think everyone has looked at it coming 'down' from the Z chipset, when people should really look at as a top class B chipset board.

Imagine you're bringing together a budget build and have decided to go intel and not AMD. There used to be only two real options, send more and get an entry level z board that normally had more features, or spend less and get (more often then not) a foul looking board with the bare minimum of features.

This option now fills in the gaps. A feature rich board, (NVM based M2, USB 3.1 type C, great audio) for a (presumed) reasonable price.

It's almost like a car. Imagine, you could spend £22k and get a Skoda Superb. Sure it's not fast, but it's subjectively a nice looking car and has all the nice features you want. Alternatively, you could pick up a kit car for that money ( I think, that sounds like kit car money, right? ). It could go like absolute stank, but you're missing all those lovely nice features you potentially wanted.

It's not all bling (well, the LED's most certainly are bling items. As is the water pump fan header) but a board being aesthetically pleasing when it's competitors still have slightly brown PCB's is a really good thing!

[Arulmani]

Aesthetics of the board is quite impressive!!

[jigger]

No overclocking options
Cut back chipset
Crap audio
Pointless heat sinks
No 10 Gigabit networking
ROG price tag...

[Graywoodford]

i think the rog price tag with this will put people off it, just not worth the cash

[Worms]

This motherboard is astonishing!

[GotKevlaar]

id not waste the time. save the little extra and go ROG even if you decide not to overclock. At a mimimum, youd have the reliability and durability of ROG.