ASUS released a prototype of the first desktop PC motherboard with SATA-Express support, the Z87-Deluxe/SATA-Express. A variant of ASUS' flagship socket LGA1150 motherboard from its mainline Z87 series, the Z87-Deluxe, the board features two SATA-Express ports. SATA-Express sees a fusion between two of the most successful serial I/O interfaces, SATA and PCI-Express. It's essentially ATA over PCI-Express 2.0 x2, which offers a raw bandwidth of 8 Gbps per direction, 16 Gbps total. The SATA-Express port is structured similar to the classic SATA port, with PCI-Express lanes running over two 7-pin SATA connectors, and an additional block of 4 pins that make up the 18 pins required by 2-lane PCI-Express. A SATA-Express connector is thus unified, and legacy SATA devices should still be able to run off one of the two 7-in SATA connectors in a SATA-Express block.

Since there are no SATA-Express drives in the market, ASUS gave TweakTown a MacGyver contraption that adapts SATA-Express to a physical PCI-Express 2.0 x4 slot (electrical x2). An ASUS RAIDR Express PCI-Express SSD was found to offer sequential transfer rates of around 750 MB/s on ATTO. The rest of the board is practically identical to the Z87-Deluxe. The board uses a 16-phase VRM to condition power for the LGA1150 CPU. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors. Expansion slots include three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x16/NC/NC or x8/x8/NC or x8/x4/x4, depending on how they're populated); and four PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slots.The Z87 Express PCH gives out six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, of which two are given away to the two SATA-Express ports (should you decide to plug-in a normal SATA drive into them), while four are given out in ordinary stacks of two ports each. The board offers a total of eight USB 3.0 ports, six on the rear panel, two by headers. Connectivity includes two gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11 ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0. Display connectivity includes a DisplayPort 1.2 connector, and HDMI 1.4a. 8-channel HD audio with optical (TOSLINK) digital output, and a number of USB 2.0/1.1 ports make for the rest of the connectivity. ASUS didn't reveal availability details. For more benchmark results of the RAIDR Express on this board, click on the source link.