ASUS is commemorating its 30th year in the motherboard industry with the Prime X299 Edition 30 motherboard and Prime Utopia reference desktop platform. The Prime X299 Edition 30 is a premium LGA2066 motherboard with support for Core i9-9000X series processors out of the box. It is based on a familiar-looking PCB layout, mated to a new mostly-white composite heatsink/shroud over the rear I/O, the M.2 slots, and the chipset heatsink. The VRM heatsink is active and has a concealed 40 mm spinner ventilating the metal. Three each of PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and M.2 NVMe slots, an integrated rear I/O shield, premium connectivity that includes 802.11ac WLAN, and a high-end onboard audio solution, make for the rest of it.

The Prime Utopia is something else. It's a concept high-end desktop built around a motherboard that has slots, headers, ports, and connectors on both sides of the PCB. Its "obverse side," if you can call it that, has a shroud that conceals the memory slots, most controllers, chipset, and a 7-inch USB display that puts out real-time system monitoring data, or pretty much anything you want it to display. The CPU socket is on the other side of the PCB, and the processor and CPU VRM are liquid-cooled. An angled PCI-Express slot holds the graphics card along the plane of the motherboard. It all comes together on a CM Cosmos-like chassis frame that lets you show the innards off.