ASUS’ Republic of Gamers division created a new motherboard that is something a little bit out of the ordinary, the new TUF Trooper B85 motherboard. The new Trooper is built around the B85 Express chipset and with an Intel LGA 1150 socket for the 4th and 5th generation Intel Core CPUs. It uses DDR3 memory of which it supports up to 16GB with the two DIMM slots. Being a TUF board it also comes with all the extra tested and reliable TUF components, and it also has support for Quad-GPU CrossFireX setups.
If you think that the motherboard looks a bit out of shape, then you aren’t wrong. The height is still the standard ATX form factor, but ASUS cut 64mm off the width of the board and moved the southbridge between the PCIe slots. Nothing looks cramped in there and there’s plenty of room for everything, so why not. The long design allows the use of more PCIe cards over a square design such as the mATX.
The TUF Trooper motherboard comes with six SATA ports where four of them are SATA3 and the last two are SATA2 ports. It has onboard headers for both USB 3.0 and 2.0 and also comes with two USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 on the IO panel. The network is covered by an RJ45 gigabit ethernet connector powered by a Realtek 8111GR controller. Users who want a great sound aren’t left out either as the Trooper has an onboard and shielded 8-channel Realtek ALC887 HD codec.
The ASUS TUF series of motherboards isn’t just built with extra reliable components and tested rigorously, they also come with a row of exclusive features. The TUF Thermal Radar Core keeps track of all your components with more sensors than usual and allows for easy setup of your fan profiles. The TUF ESD Guards 2 is the second generation of protection against inadvertent electrostatic discharges when connectors are inserted into the IO panel and it’s been improved with a 30% better resistance over the previous generation.
The TUF LANGuard helps your network to keep a better and more stable network connection, which even improves the throughput with extra surface-mounted capacitors. The TUF Audio design keeps the sound pure with extra shielding that is LED-lit and uses a dedicated audio layer.
So why the older chipset?