[News] ASUS Intros the WS X299 SAGE Motherboard

[StyM]

https://www.techpowerup.com/238714/a...ge-motherboard

ASUS today introduced the WS X299 SAGE motherboard, a socket LGA2066 motherboard designed for Intel Core X "Skylake-X" processors, in the SSI-CEB form-factor. This board is targeted at the same quasi-workstation crowd that the company's WS X299 Pro and WS X299 Pro SE are designed for, but unlike the latter, it lacks an iKVM remote-management chip. Those looking for more serious workstation builds involving something from Intel's Xeon stable or even 2P setups, should consider the larger WS C621E SAGE. The WS X299 SAGE is targeted at those who need the massive PCIe loadout of the C621E SAGE, but can make do with 1P Core X processors.

The ASUS WS X299 SAGE draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe power. An 8-phase VRM powers the CPU, and is rated to power 16-core and 18-core CPU models. The CPU socket is wired to eight DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 128 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory; and seven PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. Storage connectivity includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and two each of 32 Gb/s M.2 slots and 32 Gb/s U.2 ports. Four USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, two 1 GbE interfaces, and a dozen USB 3.0 ports make for the rest of it. The company didn't reveal pricing.

[NEOAethyr]

In my opinion, and that's all it is, i think it's really a bummer what they did with this new workstation lineup.
Here are the probs I have:

More then 2 boards, I'm all for the full sized and the micro sized boards.
But to have 3 boards of ruffly the same size and design is kinda lame, it can't be great for there dev team and pocket book to put out a bunch of boards only a fraction of a % will buy.

The heatsinks, omg wth...
The previous gen's of ws boards had a good heatsink setup, a real one.
Now they went the way of cheap consumer board heatsinks.
Making the reliability look like a consumer board.
That was one of the more striking features in previous gen's, a good heavy duty heatsink design that works.
Now I'm completely turned off.

I see the pwm quality is still lower then the extreme boards.
No tantalum caps, still...
Tat's are more reliable in the long run, something you should see on workstation boards.
Instead it's designed more or less the same as the mid range crosshair/hero boards.

While i think it's great to see yet another gen of workstation boards from asus.
I like checking into the reviews and pics of them...
This time, however, I'm quite underwhelmed.

If they brought back the the heatsink design from the previous gen's, actual fins and such...
Added tat's to the pwm to make it equal to the extreme, and a bios that's equ as well.
I'de go for the ws boards.
But otherwise, I'll continue on as I always have an get the best I can find and afford.
Ie crosshair/hero or extreme (the latter preferably).

Like I said, the heatsinks on this new gen really is a step down in my opinion.
I think you would be better off with the hero/crosshair.
I think the support for those will be much better.

Kind of a bummer if you ask me, and I hate to be a debbi downer about it.