10G Ethernet and a 27in 165Hz display
Amid a sea of ROG demonstration booths, one of the products that attracted its fair share of attention was the ROG Areion 10G PCI Express 3.0 x4 Ethernet card. Designed for enthusiasts who are unwilling to wait for motherboards to adopt the faster networking standards, Areion was first announced back at CES and is now expected to arrive at retail by the end of the month.
ROG Areion 10G PCI Express 3.0 x4 Ethernet card
UK pricing is yet to be confirmed but we do know that the half-height card includes a good-sized heatsink to help cool the underlying Aquantia AQtion AQC107 LAN chip. Backward compatible to support 10Gbps, 5Gbps, 2.5Gbps 1Gbps, and 100Mbps speeds, Areion will deliver a tremendous speed boost to most current consumer motherboards and happens to be one of few new ROG products not to feature RGB lighting.
Monitors play an integral part in the modern ROG arsenal, and though Asus was keen to return the spotlight to the ROG Strix XG27VQ and ROG Swift PG27UQ panels announced earlier this year, there's another new addition on the way in the form of the ROG Strix PG27VQ.
The product names aren't exactly easy to get to grips with, but this 27in curved panel serves-up a WQHD 2,560x1,440 resolution at a silky smooth 165Hz with G-Sync adaptive framerate technology.
Asus has confirmed us that the PG27VQ will be available with quantum-dot technology in certain SKUs, and all models will feature an 1800R curvature as well as a 1ms response time. RGB lighting with Aura Sync is of course included - though the usefulness of lights on the back of the monitor remains a question mark - and though pricing is currently unknown, worldwide availability is set for Q3 of this year.
