Asus has been having some trouble with its high-end gaming motherboards. As the newest graphics cards launched, reviewers noticed some scratches and chips on motherboards with the Q-Release Slim system, which lets you pull a card out of its PCIe slot without using latches or buttons. Based on some retail photos, the latest Asus motherboards seem to have revised the problematic slots.
Twitter/X account Uniko’s Hardware spotted a visibly distinct latch mechanism on the Asus X870E Apex motherboard, which is now up for pre-order on Newegg. They speculate that the bracket between the initial retention peg (that first cutout section on the slot of the GPU itself) and the x16 pin area removed a metal bar. It looks like it’s either plastic or a much different, thinner metal construction now.
We’re talking about tiny revisions of a fairly involved design here, but as VideoCardz.com notes, it makes sense that Asus would want to get the design right on its most expensive motherboards. Q-Release Slim is a feature on only a few Asus motherboards, with the intended function being the ability to remove a heavy GPU with one hand and a slight pulling motion from the front but not the middle.
Once again, I’ll point out that the scratching issues on Q-Release Slim motherboards have only been noticed by professional graphics cards testers and reviewers, who plug in and remove cards way more frequently than most at-home desktop PC builders. And even among that small batch of reports, damage to the GPU connections has been entirely cosmetic with no functional issues.
But if I were spending two grand (or more) on a new graphics card and another several hundred dollars on a top-of-the-line motherboard to go along with it, I wouldn’t want the latter to scratch up the former. Asus seems to have acknowledged this, if only fleetingly with some official statements. But yeah, it’s probably worth a little more R&D if they want to keep this feature alive for future motherboard designs.
The adjusted slots are only on pre-order pages so far, so we’ll have to wait for reviews to see if the new Q-Release Slim mechanism is improved.
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