This image from TechRepublic speaks a thousand words.
Just look how small the motherboard is. Look how huge the battery is in comparison to the motherboard. Look at the lack of ancillary components. Check out the heat-pipe. This is an Ultrabook exposed and it shows amazing integration.
The motherboard says it all really. That’s what the Ultrabook is all about.
CPU, GPU, chipset, busses and a lot more that I’m not qualified to comment on, all on one board. It looks small today but by the time we hit Haswell, expect that motherboard to be about 50% of the size. High levels of integration (and automation) are key to making quality laptops, cheap. When Intel talk about ‘learning from tablets’ I think of this.
A word on the heat-pipe. I’ve seen this layout a few times now. It appears on my (Ultrabook alternative) Samsung NP350 and I wonder (as we’ve been talking about patents recently) whether this is a design that is patented by Intel. I know Intel have got a patent on the keyboard air-intake (or so we were told at CES) but maybe this is another. Does the MacBook Air heat-pipe look like this too?
I encourage you to hop over to TechRepublic for a full, and quality, photo-set of the ASUS UX21 being dismantled.
Thx @morganmobile for the tip.
I dismantled my review unit from ASUS kind of. Only removed the under side of it, and ripped of a warranty sticker so I could take some shots of the tiny SSD in all it’s sexyness and the soldered DRAM. I should’ve saved the sticker thou as the rep. wasn’t very happy with me :D
To chippy:
in May-June, UX21 and UX31 will get FullHD display! Yes, 1920*1080. This is quite an important news, for there was no 11-incher with FullHD ever in notebook production ever. Also, we will be pleased by backlit keyboards both on Ux21 and U?31. You may post this info, givig a reference to itc.ua (http://itc.ua/news/eksklyuziv-asus-gotovit-obnovlenie-dlya-ultrabukov-zenbook-ux21-ux31-s-full-hd-displeyami/). What is also of interest is that new pricing will be a little bit lower than it previously has been last year, when actual sales of UX series began.
Very interesting. I’ll check out the article. Thanks.
motherboard is complicated, but what about the performance ..?