Supermicro is on a mission to build high-end gaming motherboards with DDR5
By Asus and Gigabyte may have some new competition.
Companies like Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI make some of the best motherboards for gaming, but once new technologies such as DDR5 memory and PCI Express Gen 4 roll into view, we might be talking about Supermicro in the same vein. While primarily focused on server hardware, Supermicro wants to make a major push into the consumer space.
Part of that push will include motherboards for gaming PCs and other high-end desktop systems. This isn’t actually new territory for Supermicro. The motherboard pictured above is an X99 board, and a visit to Supermicro’s website uncovers a bunch of Z390 boards that you probably never heard of, such as the drab-sounding C9Z390-CGW.
In an interview with KitGuru, Supermicro’s senior vice president in charge of field applications engineering and business development, Vik Malyala, talked about making a spirited push into the consumer space. One thing that was made clear is the company’s confidence that it can compete.
“If you’re asking me if it is already at a saturated level, by no means is that the case. There is going to be a huge amount of innovation that we are seeing and we will be bringing that technology to market in the next couple of years,” Vik said.
He didn’t get into specifics, though he did talk about the upcoming transition to DDR5 memory, changes to PCI Express, and next-gen storage solutions. Vik sees two advantages that tie into those sort of things. One is that Supermicro designs pretty much everything in-house, and the second is the company’s technology partner relationships.
“Bringing all of these different technologies, fully validating as if these systems are going to be in standard enterprise data centers, and bringing them to customers first. Time to market is absolutely important and that is where we shine,” Vik said.
It all sounds good in theory, though gamers are a discerning bunch. Hopefully Supermicro doesn’t intend to revive garish designs like its SuperChassis 732G-903B case.
We’re also interested to see if the market can sustain another player in the motherboard space. There has been a thinning of the herd over the years, with companies like DFI and BFG falling by the wayside.
While nothing is concrete, it sounds like Supermicro is planning to make a splash later this year.
