ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe P55 Core i5 Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,624 words · ~8 min read
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okay so today we're going to be unboxing and having a quick look at the ASUS p7p
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55d e Deluxe I mean motherboard names
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it's like yes these all mean something but man are they ever like confusing
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when you're trying to shop and you don't actually know a lot about computers okay
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so this is part of their new Extreme Design platform number one performance
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reliability and safety I'm not quite sure exactly what that means but anyway
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it's Windows 7 ready physics ready whatever that means it's LGA 1156 it's
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p55 so you're going to see the usual p-55 features except that this is one of
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their new updated boards and it includes USB 3.0 SATA 6 gbit per second as well
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as a 24 hybrid phase design which according to this means that it
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has 16 plus three phases and T probe
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which I believe is some kind of like a dynamic adjuster of detects and balances
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power phase loads and temperatures Real Time with optimal power power phase
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functions components run cooler and extend system lifespan very cool okay so
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also on this board let's start at the top you have you have the express gate
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hybrid OS whatever you have system level Energy Efficiency so that um controls
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everything about your system to try and get better power savings or something
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you have an onboard switch um which is a fairly common feature at this point you
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have the Q design for DIY quickly and easily okay you've got quad GPU SLI and
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quad GPU Crossfire X support that's pretty cool Auto so they've got a
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software overclocking utility and they have memo K which allows you to take
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even memory that has sort of non-standardized um non-standardized
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settings it allows you to at least get the board to boot with that memory in so
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that you can adjust all of the settings and get it to run properly at the rated
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speed so let's get this box open and have a look at what we have for
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accessories okay the first thing I like about this board is that it has black
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SATA cables I am so sick of seeing like yellow and red SATA cables show me a
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system with a color scheme that yellow looks good in I challenge you to do that
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okay so you got three right angle and three straight SATA cables then you've
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got an SLI Bridge okay you've got the Q connectors part of their Q design and
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those allow you to plug in the front panel connectors fairly easily I love
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this this is awesome I talked about this on one of the recent assus boards I had
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a look at instead of including two USB and one fire wire Port I'm now seeing
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combo back plates that are 2 USB and an ESAT Port way more useful I mean who
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uses fire wire anyway okay then we've got what is
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this turbo key bus speed oh okay so this is their little overclocking remote
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control that looks to plug into uh must be USB because it's colorcoded red white
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green black black like USB but it's a converted USB port on the board
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somewhere okay then you've got an IDE cable then you've got an IO Shield which
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isn't colorcoded but they have done one special call out you can see these two
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USB ports are highlighted white those are the USB 3.0 ports then we've got the
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piece the user guide as well as the driver disc and a case badge okay don't
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don't use this driver disc download the latest ones as I usually say now let's
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get the board itself out of here now I
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realized that the uh p-55 boards launched not all that long ago but we're
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seeing so many updated product designs just because of the launch of SATA 3 and
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USB 3.0 so that's going to be kind of the focus of my unboxing but let's do a
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quick overview of the overall design of this board okay so we have two PCI
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Express 60x slot so those are going to be for your Crossfire or SLI they are
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functional in adex adex mode if you are using Crossfire SLI like all p55 boards
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because the PCI Express Lanes are actually powered by the CPU and not by
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the chipset okay down at the bottom here we've got our onboard power and reset
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switches and oh there's a plx chip for some reason although I couldn't tell you
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what that is for w wish I knew why that
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was there cuz normally a plx chip is like a PCI Express Bridge chip and it's
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usually there to like split PCI Express Lanes or something no no they both run
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at adex okay so I wasn't wrong there all right so let's keep moving right along
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then we've got three USB 2.0 headers
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then we have okay so these two white
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ones here are the SATA 6 gabit per
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second ports okay this one is satore E1
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and I don't know what the relevance of that that is maybe it's running off the
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same chipset as the other eSATA back here I'm kind of guessing there and
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since all of the chips are covered under this kind of neat looking um heat sink I
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can't really tell what they are then on the side of the board we've got six SATA
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2 ports so these are all running off the Intel chipset we've got an IDE port you
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will notice the conspicuous absence of a floppy Port I'm sure most people won't
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miss that like all p-55 boards we've got support for dual Channel DDR3 memory and
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you can see that they're using their um trademark design here on the memory
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slots only one end of the memory slots actually has a clip so what you're
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supposed to do is peel these back slide the memory slot in from the top into
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this side and then just clip it in from the one side so it makes memory
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installation in theory much easier okay we've also got our memo K button over
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here so that is to make sure that the board can post with whatever memory you
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happen to be using and then up here we've got little uh switches to overvolt
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the CPU the integrated memory controller or the RAM it's kind of nice to have
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those hardware switches for the really hardcore guys who are using this on an
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open test bench anyway okay so moving right along we've got our power
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connector at its ideal place along the right hand edge of the board and then
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we've got an eight pin power connector up at the top sort of left of the board
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a lot of a lot of cases these days have a hole for it right over here so it's a
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little bit of a reach but overall I like this position uh here is our 2 24 phase
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hybrid design which apparently means 16 phases for the CPU itself and then I
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believe three phases for for the integrated memory controller something
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that I really like about this board right off the bat is it has so many four
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pin fan connectors we've got a couple here and most boards usually just give
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you one for the CPU and no other ones but it's kind of nice to see that ASUS
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is using their now trademark because so many of their recent boards are using it
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this kind of like ice castle looking Moss fet cooler design I really like
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that I think it looks really stylish um
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what am I missing here okay well here's the oh here here's the plug for that um
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for that overclocking remote control thing so I can't imagine the
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practicality of that but I guess you plug it in here if you're on an open test bench and then you can kind of run
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it off the top of the board that way uh here's the CPU socket it's an LGA 1156
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socket supports Core i5 core i7 blah blah blah okay thaty oh I like this
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actually it's so rare you see the board manufacturers not cheap out and uh use
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like proper back plates on their mosfet coolers because this really gives a lot
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more rigidity to the board I mean a PCB has a lot of flex in it so when you put
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these kind of mounting plates on the back it allows you to make much better
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contact with the mosfet coolers on the top so you can ensure that everything
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gets cooled adequately so I really like to see that as well okay then let's get
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around to the back of the board here we've got two PS2 ports I don't think these are ever going to go away to be
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honest we have a clear seimo switch here's our two USB 3.0 ports then we
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have two digital audio ports we've got six USB 2.0 ports a fire wire an eat 2
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gigabit Ethernet ports as well as 7.1 audio and thank you for checking out my
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unboxing of the p7p 55d deluxe