Pegatron gets into the mobo design business

CES 2011: Bombshell of CES

Pegatron logoFOR THE BOMBSHELL of the day, how about a big new player in the mobo business? Who? Pegatron. What? A Brazos/Ontario/Zacate/Snooki motherboard.

Before you look at the board itself and say ‘meh, another Brazos mini-ITX board’, you would be right there. In fact, it isn’t anything nearly as nice as the Sapphire or Gigabyte boards that I have seen. The bombshell is that Pegatron is designing mobos.

Pegatron mobo
Note the name on it

Pegatron is the manufacturing arm of Asus that they spun off a while ago, the idea is that Asus proper would design boards, and have flexibility to make them in more places. Pegatron would make the parts, and could go after non-Asus designs and business. It is theoretically a win/win.

The problems start when Asus starts manufacturing boards or Pegatron starts designing them, then these former partners become current enemies. While I have no idea what the contracts between them actually state in detail, I am willing to bet that Asus is not very pleased about this turn of events. One might go as far as to say they are probably miffed. Yet if you look above, there is a Pegatron branded Brazos board.

The board itself is nothing special, it is simply a mini-ITX board that has a PCI slot and full sized DIMMs instead of a PCIe slot and SO-DIMMs like the Sapphire board. This means it is more of a media center part than a gamer part, but either one should be enough for ‘casual’ gaming.

In the end though, the important bit is not what the board is, but who the board is by. That is one of those things that turn heads. If Pegatron is really stepping into the market, it could seriously shake things up for everyone.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate