ASUS Prime B250 Pro Motherboard Detailed

[btarunr]

ASUS is introducing the new Prime family of motherboards positioned between its Pro Gaming series and its mainline series. These are motherboards that share their feature-set from the company's mainline series, but feature black PCBs, and black+red product styling reminiscent of some of its premium ROG motherboards. Here are some of the first pictures of the Prime B250 Pro, an ATX form-factor motherboard priced around the $100 mark. The board could share its PCB design with the Prime Z270 Pro. Based on the Intel B250 Express chipset, the board lacks NVIDIA SLI support, or the kind of CPU overclocking features the Z270 chipset does.

The Prime Z270 Pro draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, and conditions it for the CPU with a 7-phase VRM. Expansion slots include one PCI-Express 3.0 x16 wired to the CPU, a second x16 (electrical x4) slot wired to the PCH, and two each of PCI-Express 3.0 x1 and legacy PCI slots. Storage connectivity includes two M.2 slots, from which one is 32 Gb/s (bottom), and the other 16 Gb/s (top); and six SATA 6 Gb/s ports. The board offers two USB 3.1 (10 Gb/s) ports, one USB 3.0 type-C port, two USB 3.0 type-A ports on the rear panel, and four USB 3.0 ports by headers. Display connectivity includes HDMI, DVI, and D-Sub. ASUS also has a stripped-down variant of this board, called the Prime B250 Plus. It lacks USB 3.1 ports, and the heatsink over the CPU VRM.



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[Chaitanya]

Why so much red on a B series motherboard, dont these boards generally end up in channel for mass PC builds.

 

[Hood]

Why so much red on a B series motherboard, dont these boards generally end up in channel for mass PC builds.

It's a cheap way to sell more of these entry level boards, so even those on a very low budget can have their "racing stripes", like a hood scoop on a Chevette...

 

[silentbogo]

Why so much red on a B series motherboard, dont these boards generally end up in channel for mass PC builds.

Not really. B150 and H170 were perfect for cheap gaming rigs, because you get pretty adequate number of features, except overclocking.
I'm using B150 in my rig too.
On this B250 board a dead giveaway is 2xPCIe x16 slots and a pair of M.2 slots. What kind of mainstream PC will need those?

even those on a very low budget can have their "racing stripes", like a hood scoop on a Chevette...

Exactly this ^^^

Though, I would've liked a bit more if manufacturers decided to save few precious pennies on a paintjob/silkscreen and added at least some horizontal SATA-III ports instead of those cheap flimsy vertical ones.
Just a pair on the edge of the board would suffice...