I don't see a problem with red and black, my rig is red and black, my OCD cave is red and black, my bike is red and black and the same goes for my president and my Maybach.
Also I think its fair that every manufacturer does it, why the hell not everyone should benefit from the added performance and epeen having a red and black product brings.
BUT, I do think surely having a red and black product at a similar price point and feature set to a ROG product is just futile, they are never going to win that sale because nobody else makes a board or card that looks as good as ROG, well they do but it's never going to steal the heart of the fanboys. Everyone needs to express their own identity when it comes to the range topping or gaming orientated boards. I'm a big fan of the Lightning/MPower stuff and the OCForce and if it were me i'd be trying to push those kinds of original designed solid products at the same audience as the ROG stuff.
Now it looks to me like that is what MSI and Gigabyte are doing, these X99 chaps i'd expect are coming in a few rungs below the Rampage V Extreme and will perhaps be a little more competitive, that seems fair to me. Obviously that's a speculative statement as we don't know the entire X99 fleet yet but I think everyone should lay off the red and black beef just until we have a bigger picture.
I do like the whole RGB or switchable heatsink idea BUT i prefer to see a really carefully considered aesthetic with fully co-ordinated ports and slots, I think an all black board with a couple of clip on dashes and flares would look really weak at the side of a ROG or MPower board.
Perhaps more thermal armor designs which are easily moddable are what we should be asking for?
I'd also like to see a metal themed motherboard, I mean like a gold/copper/nickel board that wasn't stupid but really carefully considered like an Alphacool component or an Essence STX.
JR
you just need a soldering iron
