DIY just for gaming? Equip the motherboard with RGB lights to make the chassis glow

In the eyes of more people nowadays, computer installation is boring, screwing in screws, setting jumpers, installing heat sinks, lighting up... However, recently, an ASUS motherboard has made the whole office excited. "Can you change it to pink?" "Play a song and try it?" ASUS B150 Pro Gaming Aura is a motherboard that not only has light in its name but also has "light pollution" itself. As soon as the editor installed the machine, it immediately attracted the attention of all colleagues...

Compared to expensive MOD units that require certain DIY skills, AURA only requires software settings to achieve similar effects. So in the long night, apart from the screen and the cigarette butts in your hand, are you ready to let an AURA that lights up as you wish accompany you?

The color scheme of AURA, the main gaming motherboard, is similar to that of the ROG series. The red and black color scheme is quite gaming-style, and the red lines on the black motherboard are like the ferocious blood vessels of a performance beast. It perfectly presents a sense of power and technology, highlighting ASUS's design skills in this area.

Similar to other B150 series motherboards, AURA provides four memory slots and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a maximum frequency of 2133MHZ. A row of RGB LED lights are set on the back of the PCB next to the motherboard power supply interface. They can be set through the randomly included software to make your motherboard more "light-polluted".

Since it is positioned at the high end, the M.2 interface is indispensable. AURA supports M.2 SSDs with a maximum size of 22110, which makes the selection of M.2 solid-state drives wider. AURA also supports 6 SATA3.0 interfaces, which makes it easier to install on the back of the chassis, but unfortunately there is no SATA Express interface that the B150 chipset natively supports.

The back panel I/O interface includes two common USB2.0 interfaces and four USB3.0 interfaces, as well as a red USB3.1 Type A interface and a flat round USB3.1 Type C interface. As USB3.1 becomes more popular, AURA provides the corresponding interface to avoid subsequent upgrades. Unfortunately, the video interface only has HDMI and VGA, but no Display Port.

ASUS equipped this gaming motherboard with SupremeFX gaming sound effects and a set of Japanese Nichicon professional audio capacitors. The audio chip covered by the silver shield performs audio splitting processing to reduce the crosstalk between the left and right channels, allowing for more accurate positioning in FPS games. The bass and sound details are excellent, and it supports 300Ω high-power headphone amplifiers, which have very strong thrust.

Now comes the highlight. Since this board is named AURA, there must be gorgeous "light pollution". The ASUS AURA lighting control program provided by ASUS in the CD that comes with it can adjust the color and brightness of the RGB LED lights under the south bridge heat sink and near the power interface of the inner motherboard through ASUS AURA. In addition to the color, you can also set the operating mode, including constant light, breathing, flashing, rainbow, beat, and color change according to CPU temperature. The lighting options of the audio part are independent, including three modes: constant light, breathing and flow. Of course, this requires players to have a chassis with good side-transparent effect when equipped with AURA to better achieve it.

However, compared with other "lighting manufacturers" such as Alienware, ASUS's ASUS AURA seems a bit simpler and still has bugs. For example, this is what my ASUS AURA looks like after it is turned on. The software has fewer configurable items, and the UI scaling still needs to be improved. And the lights cannot be grouped and illuminated independently like other lighting manufacturers. I look forward to ASUS improving ASUS AURA in the subsequent official version.

The B150 series chipset is often labeled as "low-end" by high-end PC players because it cannot be overclocked compared to the Z170 series. Although the price has been slightly reduced compared to the initial price of 1,000+, the AURA with a price of 899 yuan is still the absolute high-end product among the B150 series motherboards on the market, and its price is close to that of Z170. In addition to the ASUS brand premium, it still has many advantages. In addition to the lighting, there are also many improvements and optimizations for e-sports players, such as RAM Cache that can optimize the game reading speed, and GAME First that can optimize the network.

For current PC hardware, it is an indisputable fact that the CPU has excess performance, and not all players need overclocking. Compared with the high price of the Z170 series, the B150 Pro Gaming Aura launched by ASUS can be said to provide a relatively cheap e-sports motherboard option for gamers who love games.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.