ASUS P8P67 Deluxe P67 LGA1156 Core i7 SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,919 words · ~9 min read
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Today we're going to be unboxing a pretty premium product from ASUS. So,
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you can tell from the deluxe moniker that this is a high-end board. This is
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their P8P67. So, I'm going to go ahead and interpret
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that for you. P8 means it is the current generation of Intel CPUs. So, that means
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we have full support for Intel's LG 1155
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socket processors. P67 is the chipset.
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Deluxe is what this board is all about. So, you're going to find pretty much
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every feature that you could possibly want. We have dual gigabit LAN. We have
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USB 3.0. We have a Bluetooth. Okay,
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we'll have to figure out what that is in a minute. Bluetooth enjoyment. All right. We have full digital VRM, which
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is the most precise. And this this one's actually the big one for me. EFI BIOS.
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So, that means that you have a full mouse interface with your BIOS,
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including support for things like a scroll wheel. Like imagine that mouse
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with scroll wheel support in the BIOS. Okay, so moving over here to the right
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hand side of the front of the box. There
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you are. Oh, hold on. I'll turn it off for a sec.
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Okay, so full support for the uh Intel
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Core series of processors on 1155. You got the P67 chipset and that's pretty
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much everything that's there up here. This is interesting. So they have their
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digital VRM EPU. So that's their I think
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it's efficiency processing unit or it's basically for making things more energy
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efficient. And then they also have their TPU.
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Okay, those are dedicated processors.
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Moving over to this side, we have the world's first. Okay, so the ultimate
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turbo processor TPU is a chip for their
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auto turning tuning and turbo V functions. So that is their automated
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overclocking. We've also got the EFI BIOS, which I talked about already. AI
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Suite 2 is their Windows software. So, it consolidates all of their ASUS
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features into one software package.
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Okay, we've got their EPU, which is, as I said before, is for energy efficiency.
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And we have support for Oh, this is interesting. Quad GPU SLI and quad GPU
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Crossfire X. Okay. DTS surround. And
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let's move along to the back. I like this box. I love it when there's a
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window to see the board through. Big fan of that, actually. Okay, so Oh, let's
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find out what BT Go is. Okay, Bluetooth model. Oh, it just means it has
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Bluetooth. Oh, that's simple then. Okay, digital power design. The new standard.
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So, their new generation intelligent processors with Digi Plus VRM control 16
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plus2. Wow, that's a lot of phases. So, they have a 16 plus2 phase power design
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on this particular board. Basically, that's to deliver cleaner
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power to your CPU, which should allow in theory for better overclocking. So,
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that's a good thing. Complete USB 3.0 solution, including back panel as well
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as front panel USB. And they've called
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out the front panel USB again here. Extra SATA 6 Gbit per second support.
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So, you actually have four ports on this board. Whereas with all of the previous
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generation, well I should say almost all of the previous generation Intel boards
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that is on the P-55 chipset, we'd only see two USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports and two
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SATA 6 Gbit per second ports. So let's have a look at what we have in terms of
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accessory package. We've got an IO shield. We have four SATA 6 Gbit per
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second ports and two SATA 3 GB per second ports. Please note these are
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identical other than the colors on the cables. There's no reason that you can't
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use one for the other and vice versa. We have an SLI bridge.
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We have their Q connectors. So that allows you to easily plug in your front
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panel connectors and then plug the whole brick into your motherboard. We have a
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front panel USB. Oh, this thing's heavy.
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Okay, so here it is. So, front panel USB 3.0 box. It's got a nice sort of finish
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on the top of it here that is quite quite classy. It plugs into or rather
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slots into a 3 and 1/2 in drive bay. And
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then this cable is going to run over to your motherboard where they have a USB
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3.0 front panel header. Outstanding. Oh
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yeah, there's what it looks like from the front as well. Okay, so that's a
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great feature especially because most cases these days don't have USB 3.0 know
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integrated in a in a with a header on them uh like that in the front. So, Digi
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VRM BTC go there's a little user guide and here is your full user guide for
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this motherboard including a powered by sticker and a DVD that you don't need
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because you can download the latest drivers and utilities off of the ASUS
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website.
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Now, let's pull this guy out and have a look at what there is to see on the
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PAP67 Deluxe. So, first of all, I'll tell you
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guys, I really like the aesthetic of this particular board. It's pretty much
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in line with what they were doing on their P-55 boards other than the
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Republic of Gamers series board. So, we've got kind of a pale and dark blue
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and white and black color scheme, which actually goes together a lot better than
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it might initially sound like. As you guys can obviously see, I love what ASUS
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has been doing lately with their uh PWM heatsink designs. Uh my personal
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favorite was their what I call their Fortress of Solitude one where it was
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kind of like a spiky thing, but I like this too. This is kind of like uh could
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be waves or it could be grass, could be kind of anything actually. Very
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abstract. I like it. You can see the 16phase power design under these heat
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sinks. Okay. So, there's probably going to Yep. There's a couple more going around the corner over here. And then
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they've also got some of their key ASUS branding on the board as well. So
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they've got their dual intelligent processors too over here as well as uh
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ASUS logos sprinkled liberally uh along
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the board. Okay, so let's have a look at the layout then. And I'm just going to
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lift this up so we can start in the middle where we have our LG 1155 socket.
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So, as I mentioned before, that has full support for Intel's new Core series
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processors on the 1155 socket. And here
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in the top left corner, we have our eight pin connector exactly where it
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belongs in its optimal, ideal, and preferred location. Over on the right
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side of the board, we have our four uh
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DDR3 slot supporting dual channel operation, as well as our 24 pin
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connector in its ideal location. along the right hand edge of the board. We
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have our memo K button here as well as
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their TPU processor switch. So bear in mind that is there. Okay, let's keep
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moving down the board. We're going to find our USB 3.0 header. This might seem
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like an odd location for it, but when you look at how short the cable is on
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the front panel connector, that is probably the reason for the header to be
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located there. So when you plug this in in the front of your case, right, you're
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going to only have to run it this far to get to the USB 3 header. So you can
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pretty much reach anywhere in front of a typical case without any hassle.
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Okay, in terms of storage, we have SATA 6 Gbit per second. So those are
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colorcoded dark blue and white. And then we have four SATA 3 GB per second ports,
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which are colorcoded pale blue.
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Here's our chipset heatsink.
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All right, let me take this off. You can see it a little better. Oh, I like that.
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Check that out. So, it actually has a bit of texture to the ASUS logo on
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there. It looks really, really sharp. Aesthetics matter to me, guys. I I I
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actually do care when I'm shopping for a motherboard. I wanted I have a windowed
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case and cameraman's looking at my Star Wars t-shirt again. I have a windowed
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case and I do like to see a nicel looking board because really that the
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largest thing in your case. So, it's going to be kind of overwhelming if it's
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ugly. So, here we have a an LED post indicator. So, that'll give you any
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error codes if you're having problems getting your system to boot up. And uh
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next over here, we have our USB 2.0 front panel headers. We have a reset and
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power switch, both built in. There's our EPU switch. So, that's for the other
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intelligent processor. And then moving up to our PCI slot layout. So, we have
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one two PCIe 1x slots. We have two PCIe
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16X slots, but please note the P67 chipset or yeah, P67 chipset, much like
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the P-55 chipset, has support for a
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single card in 16x mode, two cards in 8X
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mode and not two cards in 16x mode.
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Okay, it doesn't matter in terms of performance, but it is a distinction
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that you should be aware of. If you want dual 16x slots, you're going to have to
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move up to X58. So, we've got two PCIe uh two PCI slots
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if you have any legacy devices. And then down here, this is a physical PCIe 16X
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slot, but this one operates only at 4X. So, you can either put a 1X card down
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here or you can put in a 4X card like a RAID controller or something else like
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that, really high-end Nick, whatever the case may be.
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Moving along to the back of the board, we have all of these options. So, let's
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Oh, yeah. There's our Bluetooth. Okay. So, we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight USB 2.0
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ports. We have one of those PS2 mouse keyboard combo ports that I'm so fond
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of. We have optical audio out as well as coaxial audio out. Two ESATA ports. And
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then we've also got, like I said before, our Bluetooth. We have one FireWire
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port. We have two gigabit Ethernet ports. And I should mention these are
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running off of the Intel built-in LAN
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rather than a third-p party controller. And that's one of the things that ASUS
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actually calls out right on their board. Intel Ethernet, great capability.
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Okay, we have a clear SIMO switch as well as 7.1
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analog audio on the back of the
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motherboard. That pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the P8
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P67 Deluxe. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and don't forget to
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