MoBos Get Mojo With AsusTek, Intel And GigaByte

Motherboard manufacturers are racing to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving PC market, and have spent the past several months quietly bringing to market a series of products with more aggressive approaches to "green" PC needs, form factors and use models than ever before.

Board manufacturers including AsusTek Computer Inc., Taipei, Taiwan, GigaByte Technology Co. Ltd., City of Industry, Calif., and chip giant Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., are on the cusp of a new era of design and engineering—with impressive early results. After examining a series of new boards during the past several months, the CRN Test Center has found an array of significant and new approaches available to system builders that could help shape new strategies.

New 'Green' Possibilities
Whether it's a love for the environment, a desire to cut energy costs or a political statement, the market is pulling the IT industry toward lower-energy computing models. Whatever the reason, manufacturers are feeling the heat to provide more efficiency and board makers haven't been exempt.

Recent lawsuits between GigaByte and Asus over who makes the most energy-efficient motherboard provide additional evidence of how much business is at stake.

During the past few months, the CRN Test Center has evaluated a number of Asus boards with various versions of their EPU (Energy Processing Unit) and AI-Gear software utility. From the third-generation P5E series to the most recent P5Q series, significant energy savings over other boards was very noticeable after some tweaking with AI-Gear. The latest version of the EPU is called the EPU 6-Engine, because it provides power management for the six critical power-consuming components (CPU, memory, HDD, system fan, VGA card and the chipset).

By detecting current loads and moderating the power in realtime, the EPU automatically provides the most appropriate power usage.

Aside from the variety of desktop boards in Asus' P5 series, the company has also expanded its green designs. While manufacturing energy-efficient servers (as other companies do), Asus also has a line of energy-efficient server boards for custom system builders.

Based on Intel's next-generation 45nm Xeon processors, the series, which includes the DSEB-DG and other variations of it, are dual-processor boards, which the company states are optimized for up to 90 percent-plus power efficiency. They claim a savings of 613.2 kilowatt-hours per year when compared with general server boards with 80 percent efficiency.

Next: New Use Models