Today I have a look at another part of ASUS’ new P55 lineup featuring USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s. This is a fully featured board including 16+3 phase power (which somehow equals 24 phase power) as well as support for SLI and Crossfire.

This product comes along at kinda a weird time given that it works based on the USB 2.0 standard rather than the newer, faster, better USB 3.0 standard, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. I’ve always found it very frustrating that you can’t simply plug your laptop into your desktop via USB and just drag and drop files between them, but now you can! You can also share an optical drive which could be a HUGE boon for netbook users who only use an optical drive to install software once in a blue moon.

Today I’m having a quick look at the Crosshair III Formula, which is arguably the most “premium” AM3 board out there since it’s the top of the range “Republic of Gamers” board from ASUS.

The most obvious improvements made over the original O!Play are the wireless networking functionality as well as the built in card reader. Overall I would expect the O!Play Air to be very successful simply based on how popular the original O!Play was.

I’ve finally gotten around to taking a quick look at one of ASUS’ new P55 boards with USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s. Basically not a whole lot has been updated except for those two MAJOR updates to the spec of this board. You can save yourself the trouble of watching if you already know what a USB 3.0 or SATA 6.0Gb/s port looks like.

This board is so TUF (The Ultimate Force) that it’s resistant to corrosion from salty air! WOW!

That’ll come in handy…

But seriously, it’s nice to see a consumer/performance board that loses some of the frills and gimmicks and goes back to just solid construction using the best parts you can buy.

Today I’m unboxing the ASUS O!Play media player, which is kinda like a Popcorn Hour or a WDTV. The key feature with this one is that it plays back RMVB files.

We really couldn’t figure out a way to showcase this product that made any sense…

Obviously in the lab we can showcase the form factor, accessories, and the general look of the product, but it doesn’t really tell the story of how to practically use an item like this. Finally we decided to show it in its natural habitat, we needed to show it in a house. Neither the Cameraman nor I want people seeing our houses, so we settled for the local IKEA. We’re pretty lucky we didn’t get kicked out wandering around putting the Eee Top in places where we thought it would make sense in an average home.

Overall I think the product makes *more* sense in an Asian or European market where space saving is huge, but it’s still a cool gadget!

More of an experiment than anything else at this point, but we’ve put together a quick, low production value (emphasis on low production value) video spotlight of the Rampage II Extreme. We cover the included accessories, the board layout, and we’ve got some pretty good video shots of the product itself.

As always, your comments are essential to making our production more successful.