Tuesday, June 5th 2012

ASUS ROG ZEUS Fuses LGA2011 Motherboard with Dual-GPU Graphics

ASUS displayed a nerdtastic motherboard design concept, at Computex. Called the Republic of Gamers ZEUS, ASUS' creation is a socket LGA2011 motherboard with a dual-GPU graphics hardware soldered onto the board, in the place otherwise assigned for expansion slots. The top half of the ZEUS resembles that of a conventional LGA2011 motherboard, with the processor being powered by a 10-phase Digi+ VRM, and eight DDR3 DIMM slots. ASUS somehow made the platform support up to 128 GB of unregistered DIMM DDR3 memory (double the 64 GB limit of the Sandy Bridge-E HEDT platform).

The second half of the motherboard has the X79 PCH, and two PCI-Express 3.0 GPUs in dual-GPU configuration. ASUS hasn't revealed which GPUs these are, but sources predict it's a pair of AMD Radeon HD 7970 (Tahiti XT) or HD 7870 (Pitcairn XT). Each GPU system has its own set of memory, and a set of 8-pin + 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The display outputs of this dual-GPU setup are given out on the rear panel, as two mini-DP + Thunderbolt ports, and one each of HDMI and standard DP. The ZEUS even has as many as 8 SATA 6 Gb/s ports, four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and 12 USB 3.0 ports, besides two Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s ports. For now, ASUS' monstrosity is a design concept, and the company is undecided about launching it to the market. If nothing, the ZEUS serves as a testament of ASUS' mammoth engineering potential.
Source: VR-Zone
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30 Comments on ASUS ROG ZEUS Fuses LGA2011 Motherboard with Dual-GPU Graphics

#26
Aquinus
Resident Wat-man
Random Murderergreat idea, but highly impractical. what happens when two years down the road your cpu is still acceptably fast but you need a gpu upgrade? you're screwed, you have to replace a (possibly) $600+ mobo, AND buy a gpu!
It depends on how much integrating saves them on costs, 1 PCB instead of 3, you can merge the VRMs for both GPUs into a single set that is shared, the PCI-E is wired directly up to the GPU. There are a lot of cost saving things they can do here, so for the price of having a rig this powerful, it wouldn't be unfathomable to replace the entire thing when you want to upgrade assuming the platform and cpu match perfectly because by the time you want to upgrade you may want a new CPU, Mobo, and video cards anyways. So why not merge them all together? It by no means impractical imho, it just depends on how they price it, how well it performs, and how reliable it is.
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#27
Zubasa
Now this is fucking badass.
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#28
Disparia
Very nice.


Though might as well go all the way with an included CPU and onboard RAM ;)

Zeus: Suave Swan Edition
- i7-3820/8GB/7870x2, full board heatsink.

Zeus: King of the Gods Edition
- i7-3960X/16GB/7970x2, full board waterblock.
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#29
v12dock
Block Caption of Rainey Street
Looks like it would a fantastic oem part
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