ASUS is apparently working on a Z87-Deluxe/SATA-Express motherboard. This upcoming motherboard will feature two SATA-Express ports, which support higher bandwith than todays state-of-the-art SATA 6Gbps Ports.

SATA-Express should basically be a combination of SATA and PCI-Express. To be a bit more precise the ATA over PCI-Express protocol is being used. SATA-Express supports two times 7-pin SATA connectors and there is an additional block offering another 4 pins, which results in a total of 18 pins accounting for two PCI-Express lanes.

Today, there are no SATA Express drives available, which is why TweakTown received a rather unique adaptor to connect a PCI-Express ASUS RAIDR drive to the SATA-Express port. Running some benchmarks they showed throughput rates of up to 750 Megabyte per second.

On another note: the Z87 Express PCH natively supports up to six 6Gbps ports. If you should choose to attach two standard drvies to the SATA Express ports, then two native 6Gbps ports become occupied. If you decide to connect two SATA-Express drives, then four 6Gbps port from the PCH get occupied.

So far there is no release date that could be associated with this motherboard, but it's certainly interesting to see, that ASUS is working on a SATA-Express solution on their own.










Source: TweakTown