OT: Quo Motherboard? Any takers?

larry-peter wrote on 8/13/2013, 2:32 PM

I had originally planned on asking if anyone had experimented with any of the few existing Thunderbolt equipped MBs for Windows. Still interested if you have, but then I stumbled upon this very interesting startup company and began doing some research.

http://quocomputer.com/shop/z77mx-quo-aos/

They claim to have produced an "any-OS-ready" motherboard (appears to be a hackintosh without the hack needed) with FW 400 & 800, USB 3, and Thunderbolt. They have what appears to be an initial run of these MBs for sale, and although I haven't looked deep into the chipsets they're using, the fact that they're attempting this at all is kind of exciting. Especially at the pricepoint. This holds potential to evolve into something that could be a grand development for multitaskers like most of us.

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 8/13/2013, 3:38 PM

How successful have "hackintosh" products been over the years, even though there would seem to be real product category to fufill?
Hmmm?

On the other hand many including myself have been looking to have Thunderbolt tech move forward. We had a rosy outlook, but it was trashed to shame by reality. Unbelievable but it seems to be taking the turn of the USB bus being intro'd to the public all over again. You recall USB1.0/2 had great promo and potential, but didn't live up to the hype. It took USB3.0 to really get us moving. Same story- Thunderbolt 1.0 has been a bust, but potential is brewing for Thunderbolt 2.0. What killed Thunderbolt is that USB 3.0 got there faster and farther - oh my, the marketplace!

larry-peter wrote on 8/13/2013, 3:53 PM

Has Thunderbolt been a bust on Mac platform as well, or just the MS/Intel implementations? I don't follow hardware development much until I'm shopping and there seem to be very inexpensive and attractive products (AJA T-TAP, for one) that are TB/Mac only.

john_dennis wrote on 8/13/2013, 4:57 PM

[anecdotal response]

When shopping for my last upgrade motherboard, I considered buying the version that had Thunderbolt on board. I sometimes buy more features than I think I am going to need and figure that in the four year life of the product, I'll grow into it. With this particular port, I just lost interest and bought the board without it. The fact is that I have eSATA, USB 3, as well as gigabit Ethernet attached drives and drives in removable SATA enclosures. For storage it just didn't add anything new.

Maybe, I'll use it in the future, who knows.

[/anecdotal response]

videoITguy wrote on 8/13/2013, 5:34 PM

To understand how the Mac flourishes despite many market setbacks - you have to drill down to what makes Mac work - and that adds up to proprietary solutions that keep Mac viable and help niche it into the marketplace. Then that is to understand why Mac has Thunderbolt 1.0 and since there is nothing competing or better than that on the Mac it stands to reason that that niche will flourish.

Now it will be interesting to see if Thunderbolt 2.0 will flourish there, and it is likely it will.

But look at the PC - very competitive and "open- source" market means that competing tech like USB3.0 and Super USB3.0 are going to forge on and possibly ahead.

ddm wrote on 8/13/2013, 8:28 PM

Thunderbolt on a Mac (or a PC) easily outperforms any USB 3 system out there. The problem with Thunderbolt is how ridiculously expensive it still is. No generic thunderbolt enclosures etc. Triple to quadruple and more than the price of USB or Esata systems. the licensing must be obscene. I hope that Thunderbolt 2 will work it's way into the PC market so that prices will come down because the performance is really quite impressive.

ushere wrote on 8/14/2013, 12:13 AM

thunderbolt vs usb 3 - fyi:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/thunderbolt_vs_usb_300

videoITguy wrote on 8/14/2013, 9:58 AM

About usb3 - re post by ushere for reference. Note how the article is PC centric and establishes why the market is so self-determining in the PC world. Different story for the Mac in proprietary where Thunderbolt reigns.
Those who tout Thunderbolt 1.0 will often refer to the specs (and as undervalued by Intel as in ushere's article reference points out) - the problem in the REAL world is that this performance is NOT being measured.
Some implementation issues here?
Recall when people touted USB2.0 was going to crush Firewire? People who took the actual time to measure found otherwise. High-speed is not always what it seems to be.

farss wrote on 8/14/2013, 3:49 PM

[I]"Those who tout Thunderbolt 1.0 will often refer to the specs (and as undervalued by Intel as in ushere's article reference points out) - the problem in the REAL world is that this performance is NOT being measured."[/I]

The article measured 936MB/s which is not bad, not bad at all.
Thunderbolt 2.0 offers 20Gb/s on one channel, same total throughput as Thunderbolt 1.0 with less channels of higher speed.

ZDNet's article here explains it better than I can and also has this to say:

"Thunderbolt is aimed at high-end media professionals who have to juggle large amounts of data in the form of video. These people need all the power they can get — but it will likely come attached to a very weighty price tag."

Hm, seems to me that's us being addressed by Intel.
Of course the general public have little need for this blistering speed and yes, we'll always pay a premium price for niche solutions. HD-SDI is pretty well unheard of in consumer electronics, it's all HDMI. Today HD-SDI has evolved into 6G-SDI on the latest cameras, so of course there will be a demand for an interconnection for our computers that can support a data transfer speed of greater than 6Gb/s.

Bob.

Chienworks wrote on 8/14/2013, 9:05 PM

Strange, considering that i am a professional computer geek & sysadmin by trade, that reading this thread is the very first time i've encountered the term "Thunderbolt".

I suspect one of the detriments to adoption is the same reason that fluorescent and LED lamps still come with the same Edison screw base as all the old tungsten filament bulbs: no one wants to invest in all new lamp sockets. Same thing with USB, which has now become more ubiquitous than *any* other data connection, possibly even coming close to being more prevalent than *ALL* other data connection types combined. Why would i pay that much for a different type of connection when nothing else i already own will connect to it?

videoITguy wrote on 8/14/2013, 9:35 PM

Chienworks , I think, speaks as I have to the need and practicality of bus connections establishing themselves in the PC domain. It's a process of evolution in the market. Mac does not have that benefit with niche categories.

I do take Farss to task, because I see his comment confused over reigning niche markets with high-entry price points and determining who needs Thunderbolt for example. I see Thunderbolt as a useful interface for most of the forum members, be they hobbyist or pro. This would be a useful tool for out of the PC box peripheral attachments, Raid Systems, and even networking. The price point really need not be so high and that strategy is killing the tech at this time.