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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.

In accordance with original manufacturer's products serial number/barcode, it is warranted for 12 months repair service from its manufacture date .

https://www.msi.com/page/warra...
So that would be something to be wary of before you buy any product from them that's been out there for a long time.

THIS is the laptop.

That's definitely looking like a beast, what little I can make out of the system. Core i7 (quad I'm sure) and 970M graphics? What's interesting to me is that CPU wise, the latest 2016 MBP CPU is a neck and neck comparison, but the GPUs obviously are a clear win for the 970M, and also likely a huge battery eater. What's interesting is that laptop makes no mention of the integrated Iris graphics. Are non mac laptops still bound by discrete graphics, or have they also included auto-switching to the integrated Iris graphics to save power when convenient? Also, that laptop states it comes with dual spinning drives for the price I saw, which wasn't surprisingly high, but in line with what I expected. With bigger M.2 drive (only 1 supported?) and 1 or 2 SSDs, you can probably create a better battery life situation if you haven't already, if that's important to you.

As for heat and battery life, I dunno, both my 2011 17" and my 2014 15" retina run hot and don't last long; the 2011 claims 81% battery capacity still and it does seem to last about as long as the 2014. My wife's 2013 13" does the same, but it also has a bad RAM slot (common on that model) and a slew of other issues, so I attribute all of its problems to the faulty design and manufacturing.

A quick note - as these are older macs, and likely have been upgraded OS wise, you might wish to inspect your running processes. I had a mini just recently that shutdown due to heat sporadically. I traced it down to the upgrade process not having completed successfully due to XCode requiring registration agreement, or something like that. Once fixed, it ran cool as a cucumber again. And yes, there are Apple products with issues, like any other. The 3 year AC is vital on laptops, and I've used it for 3 of 4 of my laptops. The current 2014 is the only one that hasn't had it used. For any of your issues, I'd have immediately taken it to the apple store, where so far they've replaced 2 minis, 2 batteries, and 1 logic board, no questions asked. So yes, I too have my set of failed hardware. :) My list of other systems is far longer, and usually ends with: junked after 'n' months as unfixable.

Now that I've gotten that rant off my chest: thank you for not contributing to that.

Don't intend to - I also run a hack.... That should tell you everything you need to know.

I really just want Apple to make something that I can actually use. I greatly prefer Mac OS to Windows (I'd prefer Linux to either of those if the apps I need ran on it), but the hardware just isn't keeping up. I'm buying a machine for the long haul and I need it to not already be 2-3 years out of date when I buy it.

BTW, that hack runs a 980x, which hasn't been worth upgrading since 2010. Latest hardware just doesn't mean much in desktops anymore. Yes, I can double the performance of the desktop, it'll cost me something like $5K to do so, and run some rather interesting hardware. It doesn't seem cost effective until I need a new machine. However, I'd agree that if I'm paying top dollar, I should at least get current hardware. The minis and mac pros have not been keeping up to date.

it's something a company with Apple's resources and engineering talent could pop off on a monthly basis, which is faster than the new parts come to market on average.

Actually I read an article on the latest Intel processors, Kaby Lake?, and why they weren't in the 2016 refresh. Essentially, the MBP design was already finalized, tested, and sent to manufacturing before the processor was available. That CPU also required new supporting hardware on the logic boards. I

Actually - I get a twitter page on that link.... I was slightly confused.

Hahahahahahahahahaha! Sorry, that's a link I shared with my wife earlier in the day. THIS is the laptop.

As for heat and battery life, I dunno, both my 2011 17" and my 2014 15" retina run hot and don't last long; the 2011 claims 81% battery capacity still and it does seem to last about as long as the 2014. My wife's 2013 13" does the same, but it also has a bad RAM slot (common on that model) and a slew of other issues, so I attribute all of its problems to the faulty design and manufacturing. Ask anyone (other than Apple) who fixes these things for a living and they'll tell you the 2013 13" model is shite. Oh well, she inherited it from her dad when he upgraded 6mo after buying it, so no skin off either of our backs I guess.

I take a lot of heat here for being an Apple hater, but I just have too much Apple gear in my home for that to be true. I use what works and I absolutely love my 9.7" iPad Pro, and use an iPad Air (1st gen, bought on release day) to control a Chromecast because the Apple TV I have went to shit after a few OS updates and I didn't see any better performance from any that my friends own. My mother-in-law inherited the Air 2 when I got my wife a Pro, and my wife has has had 5 different iPhone models in the 7 years we've been together. I gifted my mother a Macbook and bought my wife a 27" 5k iMac this past November, we have 3 working and in-use MacBook Pros in the house (the 2011 suffered the GPU issue typical of that model, so it runs Ubuntu with just the integrated graphics since it can't successfully boot anything else). That's right, I've keep and frequently use a broken MacBook Pro. Yet I get shit for being a hater. Two pieces of wall art in my office consist of the top clamshell of a G4 PowerBook with the Apple logo painted red (with green leaf) and the side of a teal G3 Mac case, the Apple logo on my 2014 rMBP is painstakingly hand-painted the actual proper original Apple rainbow colors (which I spent hours matching perfectly to the logo on an old dead Mac Classic I keep around) with a slightly iridescent topcoat.

But I take shit here for being an Apple hater.

Now that I've gotten that rant off my chest: thank you for not contributing to that.

I really just want Apple to make something that I can actually use. I greatly prefer Mac OS to Windows (I'd prefer Linux to either of those if the apps I need ran on it), but the hardware just isn't keeping up. I'm buying a machine for the long haul and I need it to not already be 2-3 years out of date when I buy it.

That's not hate, that's reality, and it's what has kept me from buying an Apple computer since the rMBP I bought at the beginning of 2014; and I only bought that because a client fronted me the money when the 2011 took a dump early on in the contract and they insisted I stick with Apple at the time. If Apple happens to have some compelling hardware on the market when I need to upgrade again in the future (far, far in the future, as the Ryzen build I just put together will last me at least half a decade with minimal upgrades along the way - mostly in terms of storage), I won't think twice. But it has to be current hardware, as recent as the best PC I could put together or, at least, within a few months of that.

The slow refresh cycle is what kills Apple for my uses, and the excuse that it lets them polish the design and get everything perfect just doesn't fly when you talk to someone who repairs them for a living. Except for major refreshes, which only happen every few years (e.g. they can be working on it from the moment the previous major refresh launches), their refreshes are just faster CPUs, faster RAM, and faster storage, with a few components replaced based on failures in the previous model. That's not a whole redesign and that's not a

The problem is ddr3 vs ddr4.

Why cripple your ddr4 system to make it identical to the max ddr3 system?

No, both systems use DDR4.

All X99 systems use DDR4:
https://ark.intel.com/sv/produ...
And you can use overclocked RAM on their motherboards too:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboar...

Per Intel's ARK, the i7 5960X supports up to 2133 MHz DDR4. It has four memory channels, though, giving it more memory bandwidth on paper. The 1800X still makes do with only two memory channels, so the fact that it matches the i7 in speed is quite impressive.

I'm very aware of both but that doesn't mean the 5960X can't run faster RAM.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboar...
"DDR4 Steel Armor with Best signal stability , Quad Channel DDR4-3466+(OC)" .. and the memory channel is a feature of the Intel HEDT platform.

You can get stable 3200 MHz out of Ryzen 7 at-least and since that motherboard mention 3466+ I assume you can get stable 3466 out of the latest Intel HEDT platform at-least, as for whatever 5960X is somewhat less capable I don't know.

I go with an expensive one from a brand which have fast memory support for Ryzen:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboar...
"DDR4 Steel Armor with Best signal stability , Quad Channel DDR4-3466+(OC)"

As for the 5960X I don't know.
I totally doubt the 5960X couldn't use faster RAM than 2133. 2133 MHz is stock though. There's a difference.
For Broadwell-E the stock is 2400 MHz but as you can see above you can use at-least 3466 MHz DDR4 with it.
Stock for Ryzen 7 is 2400 MHz but multiple boards support 3200 MHz now and likely more than one person have 3600 MHz running and AMD will release an update for whatever they called their BIOS foundation in early April which will likely help with memory support further.

I didn't answered it; I made a question because I wasn't 100% sure but I'm as far as sure about it being able to run faster RAM as I can be without knowing .. sorta.

have you seen some of the stupid gaming laptops out there these days?

Look at this one from MSI
https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GT8...

portable and unwieldy describes this one to a T. I believe the term back in the 80s was Luggable?

"Literally any" is awfully easy to dispute. I can find one example that doesn't:

https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GT73...

Does that count as a "current MSI or Asus gaming laptop?"

It has a much lower resolution display, and less thunderbolt, just for starters. It also isn't $700 cheaper.

So can you hold up even one example of a $700 - $1500 cheaper gaming laptop with two (even as an option) thunderbolt 3 controllers, an equivalent HiDPI display, equally fast SSD, and the ability to drive two 5k displays at once? (Those are the features I would consider "pro.")

Even without discussing size, weight, battery life, TDP, and OS X, I don't think you can do it.

The new MBP is a disaster, but hyperbole and false equivalencies don't help make the case. They increased the price over the last gen while adding features no one seems to want.

I wouldn't say the security problem is impossible... just when the monitor is unplugged, have all RAM get flipped to all 1s, then back to 0. Very quick,

Indeed. It's a graphic card, after all. Using G DDRn. Buffer initialization *should* be something hardware accelerated on the RAM chips.

Still the blanking need to be triggered. (the proper commands sent to the GDDR chips)
And such monitors are very special corner cases (not much people are using hotplugable GPU), which requires special new code to be added to the firmware running inside the GPU (that hasn't been much needed in mainstream GPUs yet).

On one hand, even DIMM slots aren't properly blanked at shut down time, enabling hotswap attacks on *main* memory. So neglect to properly wipe past display buffers is definitely a possible risk.

On the other hand, we live in a post-Snowden world, were general awareness about recurrent hacking has been raised a tiny bit. And WhatsApp (among others) activating end-to-end encryption seems a big deal.

I do wonder if this functionality should be in a docking station as well, think the PowerBook Duo, or the IBM docking station of yore that didn't just add ports, but added a PCI bus, an additional ISA (yes, this is antediluvian tech here) bus, two IDE bays, a video card, and so on.

You can already find modern-day docks with a full blown GPU inside. MSI is having one.

And indeed this kind of technology looks nice for the "travel light but have big screen when not moving)

I can't see replacing the motherboard can save me more than pennies in electricity. I can buy something enormously more powerful but I cannot find (fanless) motherboards that sip power.

I've got a MSI AM1I and an AMD Sempron which, although it apparently has a 25W TDP, is running just fine with a fanless heatsink. (The power supply in that system has a fan, but that's because I threw in one I had lying around, not because I think it needs it.)

I'd be willing to bet that with some underclocking / undervolting it could get under 20W system TDP. For all I know, my build might be under 20W average power as-is.

My goal was a cheap build, not explicitly a low-power one -- the mobo+CPU+RAM+heatsink+case was well under $100 and I reused an old PSU and hard drive -- but I think it could suit your needs as well.

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.

It should be obvious that 300W is the figure, because 33W won't run much of a GPU. Even rinky-dink consumer GPUs will commonly draw 100+. https://forum-en.msi.com/faq/a...

it's useless because it doesn't use a processor that hasn't even launched?

It's useless for me. What am I supposed to do with a friggin Iris? Fuck that, I want a real numbercruncher, even if I have to wait.
So, I'm not complaining, they've got a great lappy, just not quite what I imagined for myself, so I'll hold out.

I can't find the link, but there was something about TB2 not being connected directly to the CP lanes.
Ah, there it is:

Intel has never allowed motherboard vendors to hang the Thunderbolt silicon / add-in card off the CPU's PCIe lanes. [...] It would have been great to have a new version of Thunderbolt with PCIe 3.0 along with the X99 launch. But, we already know it is not going to be the case till Skylake launches.

From: http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
So that seems the single most important update we've had in years, IMHO.

Hopefully I'll be able to get myself something like a WS 60, but with proper TB support that will be able to run OS X. I.e. metal case, two drive bays, lots of RAM, TB2-3, USB 3(.1), and a quadra or the like.
I'm willing to accept binary blobs on my 'puter for such specs, since I have a Free router that does the network filtering anyway.

In any case, they got pretty close to what I want except for the TB and the GPU. I might get one of these for my wife in order to support them.

Which meant that without some hackery ISA DMA channels are unavailable breaking all the existing sound blaster games in MS-DOS I haven't cared. Sure for a while there was some interesting TSR's that'd hook with emm386 to simulate the ISA DMA to a PCI sound card, but now that we live in the future, I can use something like PCem, and just emulate the entire PC.

Also, since that horrible time, even the cheapest Pentium II board had built in AC97 sound support. But I see that Creative Labs is trying to keep the Sound Blaster name relevant these days, and even partners with motherboard OEM's to embed the SB stuff onto boards. Even my MSI z87 has a SoundBlaster built in. Although it doesn't matter, I run it through an amp I found on the street, through some speakers I bought for $50 Hong Kong. It sounds 'good enough ' to me.

Unless it's 220, 5, 1 I really don't care.

Having "one of those locked down bios" sorry I mean boards with UEFI, and being able to load 'nix, bsd and windows without a problem, I'm guess mine is broken. I will say though, being able to mess around with the UEFI inside windows itself is damned nice. I haven't found anything 'nix wise that will allow the same support, but if someone knows something I'd be interested in it.

I don't see anywhere in the summary (who reads the articles anyway? ;) ) that implies it would be driver level. So I'd just assume they aren't that crazy.

I use MSI's Afterburner to record video from games and it works well enough for me (price seems right too): http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
The output file ends up quite big and I need to use virtualdub or vlc to compress it. But that's because my PC isn't powerful enough to do on-the-fly H264 video compression of the capture at 60fps.

My last Asus motherboard install (about four months ago) did not support Linux due to the NIC reporting as the wrong model,

So return the MB and get a refund. I wouldn't have spent more than 30 minutes on it, after seeing the specs were wrong. I've built about 5 dozen computers.. I have NEVER had that happen. So just return it.. it's not a widespread issue.

None of the currently available motherboards make the NIC model available before purchase

Here, I don't know what you are talking about. Granted it's been almost a week since I built my last computer, but the manufacturers websites haven't changed that much.

http://www.asus.com/
http://us.msi.com/
http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en-us/index.php
http://www.supermicro.com/index_home.cfm

Yep.. all of them list the NIC card in the MB specs.

If you're that lazy, why the fuck are you bothering me.

Motherboards meeting that spec already exist, so consider yourself awoken.

What is the reason for big-endian requirement, you will have hard time finding something that could be called "open platform". Did you look into x86 network appliances? Something like these (other embedded vendors have similar offerings):
http://emea.kontron.com/products/systems+and+platforms/communication+rackmount+servers/ip+network+servers/ip+network+server+nsw1u.html
http://www.msi.com/product/server/#/?sk=Security%20Board
http://www.ibase.com.tw/2009/fwa8207.html
http://www.nexcom.com/Products/network-and-communication-solutions/mainstream-appliance/mainstream-appliance/communication-appliance-nsa-5130

so two of your randomly picked boards have serial, the MSI http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-G45--B3-.html#/?div=Detail and the BIOSTAR (which has parallel too!).

Finally my Twin-Turbo video card will pay off!

http://www.msi.com/product/vga/NX8600GT-Twin-Turbo.html

vroom vroom

Word of warning, do not hit the little red button when the computer is on.

Well it has the little red button to make it non-functional, but I can't locate the clutch.

http://www.msi.com/product/vga/NX8600GT-Twin-Turbo.html

I don't see any bootable USB/disc tools for my current old motherboards/mobos. like this one: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=bios&maincat_no=1&prod_no=249 ... Am I missing something?

Was looking for something like this about a year ago to use as a router. Wound up finding one of these on Ebay for about $75:

http://us.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&prod_no=225

Socket M, mobile chipset. The whole thing wound up at around $250 with a CF card instead of a hard drive. It's fanless, completely silent, and my Kill-A-Watt says it's using about 24 watts. Way more stable than the typical junk router to boot - I've only rebooted it once in the last year and that was for an upgrade.

Really? Who cares that much about processor speeds? Once you get beyond a certain point, faster is pretty much useless for most things. Linux really doesn't need a 1Ghz - what could that much processor be used for?

What do I need more speed for? Check out:
Quantum Chemistry Software

Since moderate calculations on DMOL3 can take hours to days every little bit helps! Also, if Athlon's get fast enough maybe we can stop buying all these expensive SGI's. Of course improvements in cache size and bus speed are also needed to fully realize the power of these new processors.

Long live the Intel/AMD chip wars!

There are really only two companies that offer powerful modelling suites: MSI and Tripos. And Tripos software runs AFAIK exclusively on IRIX. The policy of both companies is to license modules like for example FlexX (developed by the GMD) and force them under a unified graphical interface. They don't even do most of the module development work anymore.

I did talk to people from both companies about Linux versions and the situation is like this: The tech people are mostly in favour but the sales people are sceptical because as said before the real money (support/update agreements) comes from the life science companies.

The difference in price tag for universities or non profit organizations is huge and is as always explained with hopes that the people who use the software in university will be the ones making the decision to purchase it later on.

This might sound a little odd but since there might be only about 500 people on the planet using this highly specialized software the profit margin for every sold copy has to be high.

True, but MSI does have ports of most of their programs for IBM RS/6000; some even have ports for DEC/Alpha stations.

About platforms and computational chemistry, look at the list of ports for CHARMM(Serial machines, Parallel machines); this list includes Beowulf clusters, CRAY and Intel supercomputers, and most UNIX workstations.


Granted, this is only one program (available with source), and much of the visualization programs are SGI-specific [Quanta is also available for RS/6000], porting these applications would not be impossible; The companies will have to wait for a large enough crowd guaranteed to use that port, otherwise it would not be economically feasible
[i.e. EVERYBODY OUT THERE START BUGGING MSI [or other vendor] ABOUT LINUX PORTS; hehe, even if you know nothing about chemistry, just call them up and bug them about a linux port, just try not to sound too stupid]

I believe that some BIG success stories in computational chemistry are just over the horizon. Chemical and Engineering News had an article several months back (April 26, 1999 p. 24) about the use of computational chemistry as a Chemical Engineering tool.

Also, take a look at this article about modeling SiON chemical vapor depositon on the Molecular Simulations, Inc. (MSI) web site.

Oh, this will be fun... Finally I will get to say "I told you so" to some people who thought SGI was the only way to go, and Linux wasn't even something they could consider.

What I wanna know is how the SGI ISV's are going to handle this news. Like MSI who have always been "we only port to IRIX" kind of people.