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2920X = $649 i9-9900K = $580

Frankly you'd be nuts to go for the intel chip when you can get 50% more cores AND an upgrade path to 64 cores for around the same price.

Intel Atom® Processor C3958, 16-core, 16-thread (no hyper-threading) low power (full load 47W), fan-less design, with 16MB cache, up to 2.0GHz, can access up to 256GB of RAM, and can be used as a edge-computing device or a dedicated web server.

https://ark.intel.com/products...

Server motherboards from Supermicro, TYAN, or Gigabyte, with CPU attached, for less than $800.

https://b2b.gigabyte.com/Serve...
https://www.tyan.com/Motherboa...
https://www.supermicro.com/pro...

When can AMD offer us something similar?

ASUS is a great motherboard manufacture, and has been for a long time. Even when I use other motherboards ASUS is still one of the top tier in my book. Finding a better one....

Your motherboard is using the z87 chipset
Not just ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI (other good motherboard makers) also don't have released microcode
https://www.asus.com/News/V5ur...
https://www.gigabyte.com/Micro...
https://www.msi.com/news/detai...

You'll have to rely on the OS patches.

Gigabyte: http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Server...

Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/Product...

PS/2 ports use a dedicated hardware interrupt. USB is shared among many other devices and can get backlogged. I connect my mouse to the PS/2 on this motherboard just so my cursor doesn't bounce around when I'm rendering something on all cores in the background while browsing the web. I'm sure some gamers find this useful too.

Strangely enough, the brand new motherboard I bought for a sixth generation Intel Core CPU last year has PS/2 ports. I'm still trying to work out why - PS/2 has been obsolete now for, what, 15 years? I'm pretty sure RS232 or a floppy drive connector would be more useful.

NVMe is making its arrival to PCs as well. Apple is just often among the first to adopt the coolest and most fresh hi-tech.

If by "among the first" you mean later than Dell and pretty much at the same time as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and every other first tier motherboard manufacturer.

Search this list for laptops which had the interface well before Apple introduced it in their line.

Among the first... more like among the all.

Actually, Gigabyte makes an ARM motherboard in an ATX form factor. It has the usual things you might expect on a ATX motherboard such as DDR3, SATA, USB, PCI Express, and no less than 4 NICs. Would make an interesting home firewall (or Linux box).

http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5422#ov

According to Wikipedia, the 950 consumes 90 watts while the 750 Ti consumes 60 watts.

Also, it has 768 CUDA cores vs. 640 of the 750 Ti. That means 1.2x cores for 1.5x the power consumption, which doesn't sound great. I think I've seen this before with GPUs that have some of their cores disabled, such as AMD's 5830 vs. 5870 -- for best efficiency, stay away from the crippled parts.

As for the passive cooling, I used to have fanless HD 5770 with a TDP of 108 W, so 90 W is definitely possible. However, with such wattages you generally need some forced air circulation anyway; the 5770 was fine as long as there was a case fan next to it. In general, I've found that with strong discrete GPUs, it's much easier to make fanned cooling almost dead silent than go completely fanless. I currently have two 750s with their stock fans, and I haven't bothered with cooling mods as they are indistinguishable from background hum anyway.

When we get the Steam boxes at large that will likely be easier.

Gigabyte have their Brix devices.

http://www.gigabyte.com/produc...
http://www.gigabyte.com/produc...

(they have more models)

One interesting Steam box design I saw was one which was hanged as a "backpack" on your TV.

I guess depending on whatever one already have a powerful PC or whatever one prefer tablets there may be a difference in whatever one would just want a simple box which can stream the games using the PC as rendering engine or a more capable one which will actually be running the games.

http://store.steampowered.com/...
http://store.steampowered.com/...
http://store.steampowered.com/...

Since the Steam controller and Steam machines with SteamOS was delayed Alienware launches with Windows 8.1, Steam and the Xbox 360 controller instead (the Xbox One work in Windows now too with official drivers but have to be connected with micro-USB cable rather than wireless, I don't know when they will fix wireless connection for it but I haven't bought one waiting for that to happen in case I can't buy it separately.)
http://www.alienware.com/landi...

When we get the Steam boxes at large that will likely be easier.

Gigabyte have their Brix devices.

http://www.gigabyte.com/produc...
http://www.gigabyte.com/produc...

(they have more models)

One interesting Steam box design I saw was one which was hanged as a "backpack" on your TV.

I guess depending on whatever one already have a powerful PC or whatever one prefer tablets there may be a difference in whatever one would just want a simple box which can stream the games using the PC as rendering engine or a more capable one which will actually be running the games.

http://store.steampowered.com/...
http://store.steampowered.com/...
http://store.steampowered.com/...

Since the Steam controller and Steam machines with SteamOS was delayed Alienware launches with Windows 8.1, Steam and the Xbox 360 controller instead (the Xbox One work in Windows now too with official drivers but have to be connected with micro-USB cable rather than wireless, I don't know when they will fix wireless connection for it but I haven't bought one waiting for that to happen in case I can't buy it separately.)
http://www.alienware.com/landi...

Pretty much my experience. I bought the Pi more for messing around than for as media player, so I wasn't too disappointed.

I bought a couple of these and they're great little bits of kit for running XBMC front-end. I've also since built myself a machine using one of these - pretty similar price but quite a bit more capable than the Revoes. Either of these are worth looking into.

How good is the ESD protection on USB ports? Can it handle a thumb drive filled with capacitors?

It's not good.

Oh I dunno, if you get a half decent motherboard it can be pretty good.

Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H
At Newegg

"GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 Plus debuts on GIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards, with a range of features and component choices that provide record-breaking performance, cool and efficient operation and extended motherboard lifespan."

"GIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards raise the bar in terms of protecting your system, providing advanced electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for both your Ethernet LAN and USB ports, both common sources of ESD-related failures. Each LAN and USB port is paired with a dedicated protection filter that can withstand high electrostatic discharges, protecting your system from common electrical surges and even direct lighting strikes."

"On GIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards each USB port has its own dedicated power fuse that prevents unwanted USB port failure, helping to safe guard your important data during transfer."

The board is not out of reach financially at all.

The 7970 was great because it was only $500 for 2TFLOPS SP, 1 TFLOP DP, but the downside was it took 3 slots. The 7990 looks like it takes up only 2 slots. That means an ATX-sized motherboard like the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7 can handle three and possibly four (with case modification) such cards in tandem.

Look here:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8H61M_LX_R20/#specifications
http://il.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4143#sp

They will tell you that the board uses an "Atheros GbE LAN chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)" but they don't mention which driver it uses. Specifically, they won't mention "does not support legacy drivers".

Yawn, meanwhile, I've been enjoying my Gigabyte T1125. Dual boot with Debian and Windows 7 (x64) whilst also using Visual Studio and VMware Workstation fine. Battery lasts a few hours on normal usage (OneNote, Thunderbird, FireFox, Wifi, Bluetooth, 40% brightness).

I know at least some gigabyte motherboards have parallel and serial headers. The boxes don't come with the expansion plate but you can get them for cheap.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3781#sp
Sure it isn't an off the shelf HP or Dell that you can pick up at Best Buy, but you can still get them.

I use a Gigabyte Touchnote T1028 http://gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3190#kf and the first thing I did when I got it is replace the OS with Ububtu (netbook remix).Works great

Am I a Gigabyte fanboi? You bet I am. Good riddance to Abit and their leaky caps.