The TUF Vanguard B85 is made for gamers that don't care about overclocking

Oct 9, 2013 08:21 GMT  ·  By

A while ago, Intel decreed that only Z87-based motherboards would be allowed to overclock CPUs. That means that mainboards based on, say, the B85 chipset, will always have an upper limit. ASUS didn't mind, though, when it made the TUF Vanguard B85.

The newcomer has all the markings of an enthusiast-grade platform, save for the capability for CPU clock tweaking, as we said.

Then again, gamers are far greater in number than enthusiast overclockers, and Intel Core i5/Core i7 CPUs are basically overpowered anyway.

So even without overclocking, it's doubtful that there will ever be anything truly challenging for them, at least for the next half a decade.

Knowing that, the brand ASUS applied to its new mainboard, The Ultimate Force (TUF), actually does make sense.

The new LGA 1150 motherboard has the full name of TUF Vanguard B85 and has four DDR3 DIMM memory slots (32 GB max), two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (second one is electrical x4), and a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, for energy reception from the PSU.

Four SATA 6.0 Gbps connectors can handle HDDs, SSDs, SSHDs and HHDs, while two SATA 3.0 Gbps ports are available for older drives.

There is a PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot too, as well as a legacy PCI slot, as unlikely as it is to ever be used.

ASUS also included six USB 3.0 ports (four rear panel, two via headers), Gigabit Ethernet, PS/2 mouse/keyboard combi-plug, Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel HD audio, some USB 2.0/1.1 ports, and four video outputs: dual-link DVI, HDMI, D-Sub, and DisplayPort.

Finally, the TUF Vanguard B85 is powered by a simple 4-phase VRM, made of high-grade components and cooled by heatsinks, but not really all that sophisticated. Not surprising, given that high-end VRMs are only needed for overclocking. On that note, the TUF military-grade durability components like Thermal Radar are a bit overkill, but they are there anyway.

ASUS intends to sell the TUF Vanguard B85 for $110 / €110.