News ASUS B85M-VIEW PAKER

For me the most interesting motherboard shown at COMPUTEX 2015

Besides the 90 degree angle PCIe x16 socket at the top, am I seeing another PCIe x16 socket at the bottom? Looks like a mini-DTX size board to me.
Edit: A link added.
Edit: Here is the "Parts-In-One" display this board was made for:
View Paker MD-E280DMG
http://www.viewpaker.com/product_detaila.asp?id=194
Reviews with more photos (in Chinese):
http://pio.zol.com.cn/520/5207661_all.html
http://pio.zol.com.cn/521/5219077.html
http://pio.zol.com.cn/521/5216720.html

 

[iFreilicht]

On the other end, having the GPU's sandwich the motherboard.

Good luck with the SLI bridge. I mean yeah, It would still work with CF, but that's a bit limiting, isn't it?

 

[Phuncz]

Yeah I keep forgetting about Nvidia's SLI bridge, they should really really start figuring bridgeless out beyond the low-end GPUs.

 

[iFreilicht]

Yeah I keep forgetting about Nvidia's SLI bridge, they should really really start figuring bridgeless out beyond the low-end GPUs.

They already require both GPUs to have PCIe8x. AMD only needs 4x and they've been doing bridgeless CF for a few years now. Come on, nVidia, what do you need all that bandwidth for?

 

[Phuncz]

I'm guessing there is a patent that AMD has and Nvidia doesn't or won't pay license fees for. Dual 290-series cards are still king-of-the-hill regarding 4K performance per dollar.

 

[veryrarium]

Found another B85M-VIEW PAKER style board, this time by Biostar.
Hi-Fi B85 PIO (203 x 211mm)
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=808

 

[Phuncz]

With a Z97 or H97 chipset this could have been two PCIe 3.0 x8 slots

 

[veryrarium]

Or X99

 

[iFreilicht]

You guys are never happy, are you? I think this board is a pretty awesome piece for speciality builds. You've got the angled PCIe x16 slot, a secondary x4 slot for any extension card you could want, even an internal serial header if you wanted to interface with a sepcific microcontroller.
I mean yeah, the I/O is pretty old school, but it comes to show that apparently, there is a market for boards and cases of this form factor. Maybe there could be a standard for this form factor, wouldn't that be great?

 

[Phuncz]

Yeah it would be great, but maybe a little too much to ask for. Stuff like this needs the proper momentum, just look at how long mITX has needed for it to be taken semi-seriously. And that layout basically fits most cases anyway. "This dual-sided" board requires a specific design to be of use. But maybe if enough builders try this out, we might have a chance. After all, the demand for PCIe risers hasn't been this high I'd guess, since flat cases are the new sexy.

 

[EdZ]

IIRC the current 'Steambox style' cases in development or released - that use rigid or flex PCIe risers - all have the GPU on the opposite side of the board (next to the traditional PCIe slot location). Are there any cases that already exist with close to the right layout for this style of board?

 

[iFreilicht]

I think only the one in this post, currently.

 

[veryrarium]

Found a server board by MSI that looks somewhat weird

Lack of rear I/O interfaces but three PCIe slots (on which I don't know if video cards work) sticking out sideways. The dimensions are 279.4 x 190.5mm.

 

[iFreilicht]

Those seem to be regular PCIe slots, all wired to 8 lanes, so I don't see why you couldn't connect a GPU.
Maybe this is made for Xeon Phi cards?

 

[QinX]

I looks more like some kind of blade/node based motherboard. PCIe slots are cheap and plentifull so that might be why it is used here
The manual refers to the PCIe ports to use them for LAN Modules.

 

[EdZ]

That's a real interesting board. According to the manual, those slots are configured as:

16X physica;: 4x + 4X electrical
8x Physical : 8x electrical
8x Physical: 4x + 4X electrical

They are listed as "BIOS config for LAN modules", so they may also be configurable as non-bifurcated slots, though what other BIOS settings are available are not listed in the manual.

Even more interesting though, that 16X slot is fed by the chipset, and both 8X slots are fed by the CPU! Potentially, you could run two GPUs on the thing (even SLI as they are both 8X, though Nvidia probably won't even think of supporting C226 officially)!

 

[Phuncz]

Don't forget this is a server board, so don't expect fast boot times (often 3-5 minutes) and consumer-oriented options like fan controls or even standard PC case compatibility. While this can all be overcome some way, the question is what would it achieve over a PCIe Bifurcation enabled mITX board or a decent mATX board ?

 

[iFreilicht]

Don't forget this is a server board, so don't expect fast boot times (often 3-5 minutes) and consumer-oriented options like fan controls or even standard PC case compatibility. While this can all be overcome some way, the question is what would it achieve over a PCIe Bifurcation enabled mITX board or a decent mATX board ?

Well it's the only one of those things that achieved existence so far, which is a huge plus.

But 3-5 minutes boot time? No way would I ever bite that bullet.

 

[confusis]

Been there with server boards (have run 3 server board based dual socket builds in the past, and a quad socket one!) and boot time isn't an issue.. they're designed to be on 24/7/365 so it's better to leave the system on overnight.

 

[iFreilicht]

That sounds like a lot of wasted energy. Though I guess if you're doing those sorts of builds you don't care about the electrical bill anymore.

 

[confusis]

Really depends - modern tech idles at such low wattages it's nearly negligible. I think my quad socket opteron system cost me a calculated $20/year to run 24/7 when not in use (excluding time in use of course)