The new Intel Skylake processor has introduced a plethora of updates, as well as upgrades. Most of Skylake motherboards right now only supports the DDR4 variant, hence people who are looking to upgrade from their previous system might have to also upgrade their RAM. This can be quite costly, especially if one has invested a lot on their DDR3 RAM

Thankfully ASUS has released a motherboard based on the B150 chipset, which does support DDR3 RAM. What’s better is that the motherboard is also targeted towards the gaming side of the market, and it’s not just some entry level motherboard. So what would one get with the ASUS B150 Pro Gaming D3 motherboard? Let’s find out.

Black Ship

The ASUS B150 Pro Gaming D3 features a large warship on the front. Apparently with the purchase of the motherboard, you will also be given an exclusive bundle with the game War of Warships, where you can redeem a cruiser (Tachibana or Diana) and a 15 day premium account promo.

Something that we see with all gaming motherboards no matter what brand is today is that they are mostly black with red accent, and it is the same case with the ASUS B150 Pro-Gaming board. Thankfully the red accent is not overly done and complement the motherboard nicely. A large “Pro Gaming” can be found on the bottom right corner adorning the southbridge’s heatsink.

The full sized ATX motherboard is hefty and looks feature laden, something that we love to see especially on a gaming motherboard. As stated before, the board accepts DDR3, in this case four sticks of them in dual channel mode. The motherboard supports up to 1866MHz in OC mode, quite a fast speed and it also has XMP (Xtreme memory profile) built in for supported memories.

Anchor’s Ahoy!

The ASUS B150 Pro Gaming D3, as the name implies, features the Intel B150 chipset. This chipset supports Intel’s latest line of processor, the Intel Skylake. It supports only basic overclocking, which can be seen in the BIOS where there is no option for auto overclocking by the board itself – something that is usually added by ASUS on all of its premium motherboards. While auto overclocking is missing, manual overclocking can still be done in the BIOS. You just need to know what you are doing.

Gaming Power

What does the ASUS B150 Pro Gaming D3 has in store for gamers? Well the board features two x16 PCIe Graphic slots, two PCIe x1 slots and rather surprisingly two old school PCI slots. The GPU slots are rated at PCIe 3.0. Although if you are looking for multi GPU solution, the board only supports AMD’s Crossfire. No NVIDIA SLi support for this board, folks.

The motherboard includes the high end Supreme FX sound chip, which we usually see on ASUS’s higher end motherboard. The sound chip has electrical shielding so that sounds will come out crisp and without any electrical interference. The board also features ASUS’s LAN Guard, prioritising game packets for better online playing.

Rear Gunner

At the rear of the ASUS B150 Gaming you will find both PS2 connectors for mouse and keyboard. To be honest we would have preferred if ASUS ditched them for more USB ports.

Speaking of USB you will find four USB3.0 as well as the high speed 10GB/s USB3.1 connector, which weirdly is in red instead of the usual teal. It comes in both the usual Type A as well as the new, “which side you plug it in does not matter” Type C.

ASUS has also included a HDMI 1.4 connector as well as an old school VGA connector to use in tandem with the Skylake built in Intel HD GPU. A single Intel GIGABIT LAN connector with a 7.1 analogue audio connector completes the rear.

For storage, you will have access to six high speed 6Gbps Sata 3 connectors on the motherboard. That should be enough for all of your mechanical as well as optical storage needs. But if you need something speedier, the motherboard also has an m.2 SSD connector that is rated at 10Gbps that is located just under the southbridge heatsink.

In a Nutshell

The ASUS B150 Pro Gaming is a great motherboard if you want to move to Skylake but unwilling to change or invest in the new DDR4 memory module. While the overclocking functions may be a turn off, chances are you won’t really need them much. Even on default, the performance is quite good. With all the functions that the board has it’s really is a value for money buy.

Price: RM489

Chipset: Intel B150

CPU: Intel® Socket 1151 for 6th Generation Core™ i7/Core™ i5/Core™ i3/Pentium®/Celeron® Processors

Memory: 4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR3 1866(O.C.)/1600/1333 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory Graphic: VGA/HDMI/

Expansion: 1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 mode, gray)

1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode, black) *1

2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1

2 x PCI

PC Mark 8 (Home) : 3246

PC Mark 8 (Creative) : 3372

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Value: 8.5/10

Features: 8/10

Performance: 8/10

Design: 8.5/10

Usability: 8/10

Total: 8.2

Verdict: Perfect transition motherboard