The Vanguard B85 is part of ASUS’ TUF range of boards, easily identified by the color of which some say it looks like of a military camo, others say it reminds them of chocolate ice cream. 😛
The Vanguard B85 is a Micro-ATX board for Intel’s latest generation processors (Socket LGA 1150). Below are the unique selling points of the board.
– TUF Thermal Radar Core – Complete System Cooling, Customized Fan Tuning
– TUF Components [10K Ti-Caps, Alloy Chokes & MOSFETs; Certified by Military-standard] – Certified for Tough Duty
– Server-grade Reliability Test – Promised Reliability with Strict Testing
– DIGI+ VRM – Herald the Arrival of a New Digital Power Design Era
– ESD Guards – Ultra-protection Against Electrostatic Discharge
More details at the official product page
Heatsinks around the socket are compact and doesn’t seem like they’ll obstruct anything, being a B85 board means you won’t be using this board for overclocking so stock coolers would work great.
DIMM slots, nothing fancy.
The usual layout, with a green LED to indicate there’s power running through the system.
The board is Multi-GPU capable but it will run at x16 / x4 which is pointless to begin with.
And lastly, a good set of I/O ports.
The Verdict
With Intel axed the overclocking on Non-Z chispet boards ( Read Here ), this board seems to be a pricey proposition, seeing that it’s retailing at around RM 400.
Why is it a pricey proposition? It’s because this is a B85 chipset board that can’t overclock processors, and there are other alternatives like ASUS H81M-C for RM 230 and ASUS B85M-G for RM 310.
While the board is pricey, I think it’s not a bad proposition, in fact it’s something one should consider as the board is build with high-grade components and above all it comes with a 5-year warranty. 🙂 RM 400 for 5 years warranty, it’s not a bad deal after all! Furthermore, 5 year warranty means you’ll have quite a resale value after some 3 – 4 years of use; and if anything goes wrong within the warranty period the RMA option is still available.
If you don’t intend to overclock and want a product that ought to last long and have a long warranty period, this is the board of choice.
