Asus Z87 Motherboards Will Have Thunderbolt Support

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Asus has let out yet another teaser regarding its upcoming Z87 motherboards.

A while back we showed you Asus' teasers regarding its Z87 motherboards, two of which were the Z87-Deluxe and the Z87-Gryphton. Meanwhile, Asus has dropped some more teasers, with a closeup of the LGA1150 socket, under which we can clearly read the text "Intel Thunderbolt Certified."

Beyond this, yet another teaser was released showing the rear I/O of an unnamed motherboard showing two Thunderbolt ports. They can be clearly spotted next to the BIOS reset switch and underneath the HDMI port and two USB 3.0 ports. While the likeliness can be questioned, it is a possibility that Asus will equip most, if not all, of its Z87 motherboards with a Thunderbolt interface, since a Thunderbolt controller will be integrated into Haswell CPUs.

At Computex in Taiwan, we'll be seeing more of Asus' lineup. In the meantime, stay tuned for the undoubtedly more teasers to come.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • herr terror
    It's too bad Steve Jobs didn't live long enough to embarrass himself by smugly telling the press, "Thunderbolt technology will NOT be available on PCs."
    Reply
  • SvRommelvS
    Why would Steve make such a claim? Thunderbolt is an Intel-developed technology. The contract to Apple would have stipulated whether the technology was ever to be exclusive and, if so, for how long.
    Anyone have a guess when will we see thunderbolt on video cards?
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    10721588 said:
    Anyone have a guess when will we see thunderbolt on video cards?
    I'm guessing few people would be in any hurry to switch their displays to Thunderbolt while cables and devices carry a $20-30 premium over non-Thunderbolt equivalents.

    The ability to string two displays off one port (maybe more with future revisions) would be fairly nice for multi-display setups but it may take a while for the capability to become reasonably priced.
    Reply
  • mpdahaxing
    So, what is Thunderbolt?
    Reply
  • utroz
    10722051 said:
    10721588 said:
    Anyone have a guess when will we see thunderbolt on video cards?
    I'm guessing few people would be in any hurry to switch their displays to Thunderbolt while cables and devices carry a $20-30 premium over non-Thunderbolt equivalents.

    The ability to string two displays off one port (maybe more with future revisions) would be fairly nice for multi-display setups but it may take a while for the capability to become reasonably priced.

    You can already "daisy" chain multiple displays with Display Port.

    Reply
  • tului
    Now lets get a decent amount of stuff that uses Thunderbolt.
    Reply
  • bee144
    10721527 said:
    It's too bad Steve Jobs didn't live long enough to embarrass himself by smugly telling the press, "Thunderbolt technology will NOT be available on PCs."

    You know nothing about how Thunderbolt was developed if you're making such a claim. Please crawl back into your hole.
    Reply
  • bee144
    10722314 said:

    You can already "daisy" chain multiple displays with Display Port.

    But you can't add on an additional four devices with Display Port at the end of the chain as can be done with TB. DP is the more consumer based choice though.
    Reply
  • ceh4702
    So how much are thunderbolt cables for say 2 monitors or a monitor and a backup drive. Who really wants thunderbolt? Seems like USB3 is in competition with thunderbolt. Pick a technology and go with it. It is like all the motherboards with firewire that noone used.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    10725169 said:
    Seems like USB3 is in competition with thunderbolt.
    Not quite. Thunderbolt has 10Gbps per lane vs 5Gbps for USB3 and Thunderbolt has two sets in both directions for 20Gbps per cable. The next version of Thunderbolt is already in the works, targeting 40Gbps per cable.

    So Intel seems to intend to push Thunderbolt bandwidth a fair bit harder than USB.
    Reply