Along with the arrival of Intel's refreshed Core X CPUs, a number of motherboard makers are releasing refreshed motherboards to help take those chips to their limits. Asus' Prime X299-Deluxe II is one such example of the fresh class of X299 boards hitting the market, and the company has sent over an example of that mobo to let us play with. Behold:
The Prime X299-Deluxe II improves on its predecessor in several ways, including a beefier, better-fed and better-cooled VRM, faster wired connectivity options, and a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports built right into the back panel.
For those who want to have some fun with their systems, the X299-Deluxe II has a massive LiveDash monochrome OLED screen mid-board. I've included an LGA 2066 CPU in this picture for scale—this really is a massive slice of active-matrix pixels. This mini-screen can display system stats or monochrome GIFs of the user's choice.
Take a gander at that VRM heatsink and its row of actual fins. We'll be sure to explore the performance of all those features in our full review, but for the moment, the second take on Asus' highest-end X299 board for prosumers looks promising from where we sit.
Asus also sent over an example of its ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2070 for us to put through the wringer. The RTX 2070 might be the most attainable Turing card so far, but Asus didn't hold back in giving this card the ROG treatment. A massive heatsink that seems to come from the company's outgoing GTX 1080 Ti should prove more than up to the task of cooling the TU106 GPU underneath, and it's topped off with a trio of fans and a muscular shroud with RGB LED light pipes peeking through.
Asus covers the back of the Strix RTX 2070 with a brushed-aluminum backplate that's punctuated by an RGB LED-backlit ROG logo. If that's not your thing, there's a dedicated off switch for the RGB LEDs located within easy reach to drop the card into stealth mode.
The mounting bracket for the Strix RTX 2070 comes coated in a matte black finish that won't clash with most cases on the market today. The overall look for this card is muted but menacing, and I'll be putting it through its paces as soon as humanly possible during this busy November.