Well, it looks as if ASUS was so greatly affected by the other companies’ experience in terms of building their products on a black PCB that they couldn’t miss out a chance to put in a word as well. Today the company has officially announced a new version of its popular CUSL2-C mainboard based on Intel 815EP chipset.
The mainboard got a beautiful and simple name “ASUS CUSL2-C Black Pearl”, which is just what you think of when you see it. As for the specs of this product, they are almost the same as those of the traditional CUSL2-C: ATX form-factor, 3 DIMM slots for up to 512MB PC100/PC133 SDRAM, 6 PCI slots, 1 AGP 4x, 1 CNR, ATA/100 and the whole bunch of overclocking friendly options. In fact, we found only one difference: Black Pearl supports smart card reader.
The North Bridge chip is equipped with a gold heatsink and the mainboard is accompanied with a multi-head screwdriver (!), which will be useful for any Do-It-Yourselfer. Hm, they seem to be thinking that we don’t have any screwdrivers here :-)
Anyway, this is a very pleasant trifle. We really admire ASUS’s desire to design an esthetically looking product. Although you will hardly see this beauty after you install the board into the PC case. Anyway, the screwdriver will remain :-)
ASUS Black Pearl is reported to be already shipping in mass quantities.