Image: Brad Chacos/IDG
Here’s a quickie however a gift I wished to hand down. At the Asus cubicle at CES 2024, I experienced a basic, yet sensational motherboard development that, in retrospection, I’m stunned I’ve never ever seen before.
It’s everything about making certain your PC’s RAM is correctly seated. As experienced PC contractors no doubt understand– and brand-new PC home builders no doubt curse– poorly seated memory sets can trigger all sorts of pesky concerns and can be extremely challenging to observe in the minute. Worse, depending upon the kind of CPU cooler you’re utilizing, getting to your set up RAM to examine if it’s appropriately placed can be a huge headache while troubleshooting.
Asus PR supervisor Juan Jose Guerrero informed me that much of the assistance calls the business gets can be traced back to this particular frustrating concern. In the business’s brand-new Z790 motherboards, Asus chose to tackle it head-on.
Brad Chacos/IDG
See the small orange LED indication light beside the DIMM slots on the board? That finds when there are memory modules placed into your slots, and if they aren’t completely placed, the light stays on. If they’re peachy-keen, the LED is handicapped so you can inform at a glimpse that whatever’s cool. (If you’re placing a dual-channel memory package into a quad-channel develop, it secrets off the 2 main DIMM slots.)
I would have conserved hours of my life and ounces of blood taking apart previous DIY experiences if this now-no-brainer function was offered in the past. Once again: How has no one idea of this? Hindsight is 20/20 I think.
When your RAM remains in and your PC is booted, the exact same light likewise suggests that your GPU, RAM, graphics card, and storage are all working effectively throughout start-up. That small LED is a genuine champ! And it sets perfectly with other Asus quality-of-life functions like a PCIe quick-release button and a “Q-Latch” that protects M. 2 SSDs without making use of extra tools.
They’re all discovered in every Asus Z790 revitalize ROG and TUF motherboard revealed because last Computex. It’s my very first time seeing it in action and I simply needed to scream it out.
Stay tuned to PCWorld for more PC goodness from the CES 2024 program flooring all week long!
Author: Brad Chacos
Executive editor
Brad Chacos invests his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting excessiveHe focuses on graphics cards and video gaming, however covers whatever from security to Windows ideas and all way of PC hardware.