Since its release last month AMD's Radeon R9 Nano has been treated as something of a revelation in small form factor computing, offering as it does great performance characteristics in an extremely petite package. It's no surprise therefore that AMD themselves have been marketing it as much on it 'performance density' (i.e. the amount of perf. you get per square cm) as any raw figures. However, until now the aesthetics have been carefully locked down by AMD themselves, with no custom partner solutions available. Thankfully that might be about to change according to a tease from ASUS.

Via ComputerBase.de comes news that ASUS have plans for a Radeon R9 Nano with their own livery options, rather than the black/red of AMD. Carefully matching the Signature Series motherboard's black/white aesthetics, this new design has a white shroud and matte black PCB which seems perfectly matched to their latest premium Z170 designs. Furthermore there's also the Limited Edition Z97 Sabertooth MARK S, and you never can tell if a Z170 variant will be released of that model too.



Normally you'd expect ASUS to mimic the red/black of the Pro-Gaming and ROG lines on their branded products, but it may be that these motherboard lines are well catered to (aesthetically speaking) by the reference cooler and shroud. The only slight niggle is the lack of a matching small form factor motherboard.

A this time there's no information regarding the specs of the card, but given a very similar cooler we'd expect them to be roughly in line with AMD's reference numbers. Assuming that ASUS are making use of a semi-custom design it's reasonable to expect slightly higher quality components went into the card's construction.

SOURCE: ComputerBase.de