A new Evangelion anime tribute motherboard from Asus is getting plenty of attention but not quite for the right reasons
Well, it's one way to get your product to stand out in the market.
The new ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Eva-02 Edition motherboard from Asus isn't notable for its wealth of hardware features or even the fact that it's been customised with a full blown tribute to the 1990's anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's garnered more news than most motherboards do thanks to one simple typo.
As reported by our chums at Tom's Hardware, the latest model in Asus' anime-themed motherboards is festooned with colours and images for fans of the influential mid-90s mecha anime Neon Genesis Evangelion or just Eva, for short. However, critical eyes around the Internet soon spotted a wee mistake on the I/O cover.
Instead of saying Evangelion Production Model -02, the main image on the product's page clearly shows Evangenlion. However, other shots of the motherboard don't show this mistake, so you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just a tiny design error on the picture. Except it's not, as proved by one YouTuber who bought the product and made an unboxing video of it.
At around the 2:30 minute mark, you can clearly see the typo which suggests that it isn't just a mistake on a webpage but a boo-boo running through the entire production run of the board. Sure, it's not a massive issue but if I was a huge Eva fan and wanted this motherboard to be the front and centre of my PC tribute, I'd be more than a bit miffed.
While we were musing on this typo in the office, Jacob drew our attention to another new motherboard, this time from Colorful. In the official PR material, there's a somewhat blurry image of the iGame Z790D5 Ultra board. Just cast your eyes over it in the gallery below. You might want to take an extra glance or two at the M.2 SSD covers in the middle of the board.
I know what it's meant to say and I dare say the low resolution picture really isn't helping, but you can't tell me that it doesn't read as 'love shat you play' at first glance. The main page for the motherboard has a better image for it, of course, but even then the choice of font isn't a great one.
So not a typo in this case, just a combination of a bad design choice and poor quality press images. That said, I do kind of want a new line of Shat signature PC components. Hell, who wouldn't want a Shat Radeon RX 7900 XTX Obliterator or a Shat Master 9000 case? The possibilities for infantile comedy would be endless.
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The mistake by Asus may just give the new Eva-02 Edition a bit of a sales boost, just because of a few extra people wanting one for posterity, but if I wasn't poor, I'd be ordering that Colorful Z790D5 Ultra board right now, just for that M.2 cover. Yeah, I know how juvenile I am.
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Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?