Asus WS C422 SAGE/10G

The Asus WS C422 SAGE/10G is a high-end workstation motherboard for Intel's Xeon W processor line. The primary focus of this board is to support a wide range of PCI-Express cards. Normally the number of such cards that can be installed is limited by the PCI-Express lanes provided from the CPU (48 in the case of the Xeon W). However, the WS C422 SAGE/10G uses a pair of PLX chips on the motherboard to expand the usable number of PCI-Express lanes dramatically. A full four PCI-Express x16 cards can be used at full speed, or up to seven with one at x16 speed and the other six at x8.

In addition to the massive number of PCI-Express slots, this motherboard also features a rare networking configuration: dual 10Gb Ethernet ports. These are great for high-speed network setups, which are becoming more common in areas where high-end workstations are used. These ports are backward compatible with the more common 1Gb standard as well.

A lot of other connectivity is included too. Four USB 3.0 and two USB 3.1 ports are present on the back panel, along with analog and digital audio plugs. Internally, 8 SATA 6Gbps ports are available for drives along with both M.2 and U.2 connectors. The only area lacking is internal USB headers, for which there are no USB 2.0 connections - so in most of our workstations we add a M.2 to USB adapter, so that all front ports on the chassis can be hooked up.