Introduction
The No1 Motherboard Manufacturer in the World
ASUS is the number one manufacturer of motherboards in the world, commanding almost a 40% market share of the motherboard business, one in every three computers houses an ASUS motherboard, Over 24 million motherboards were sold in 2008—the combined length of which equals 10,000 Taipei 101 skyscrapers and 600 Himalaya Ranges.
As the leader in motherboard innovation, ASUS is constantly at the forefront of advances in technology. Over the years, it has laid claim to countless world’s firsts. It was the first manufacturer to introduce motherboards supporting Serial ATA and AGP8X, P4 CPUs of up to 3GHz and beyond, With its finger on the pulse of the industry and close collaboration with the world’s leading IT enterprises, ASUS will continue to be first to the market with cutting-edge products.
Now let's meet The Asus P7P55D Deluxe
Front, inside and rear cover of the packaging that houses the ASUS P7P55D Deluxe, Accessories and Extras
What's in the Box:
Manual and Support DVD
Rear Panel I/O Plate
TurboV Remote
Asus Quick Connector Set
PCI Bracket (USB 2.0 x 2, 1 E-SATA)
SLI Bridge
IDE Cable
6x- SATA Cables
The ASUS P7P55D-Deluxe Motherboard is stunning work of art with a blue, white and black colour scheme, It uses an all solid-state polymer aluminium capacitors that incorporates various power saving features to increase its efficiency and improve electrical stability when overclocked.
The heatsinks are nicely placed on the 16+3 phase motherboard power supply with a thicker copper trace is used in the motherboard's PCB to help spread the heat more evenly this helps to decreases the overall temperature of the mosfet's and other ICs improving component life, there is a total of four fan headers on the PCB, one for the CPU plus one next to it to allow a dual fan configuration to benefit from automatic BIOS control if using a pwm connection.
The four holes around the CPU socket area are spaced differently to the socket 775 and socket 1366 mounting brackets so your old heat sink wont fit
There is easy access to the power and reset buttons.
The ASUS' P7P55D-Deluxe motherboard is a socket 1156 platform that supports both Core i5 and i7 1156 CPU's
It has three PCI Express 2.0 x16 video card slots for multi-graphic card's that supports both ATI Quad-GPU CrossfireX and nVidia Quad-GPU SLI, but if duel cards are used this will drop down to x8 Mode and the other PCI Express 2.0 will run at x4 mode, further expansion comes via two PCI Express x1 and PCI slots, the first two slots are controlled directly by the CPU, which will help to removing some system latency.
There are four dual channel DDR3-1333/1066 memory slots which can accommodate up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM. Memory can be overclocked to run at DDR3-2133/1600 speeds with compatible module, The memory slots has retention clips on the DIMM slots at one end, Previously we have seen clip's at either end but now there is just one at the top of the motherboard with a small retention clip at the bottom.
This makes things easy when removing memory modules when a large graphics card is installed.
The P7P55D-Deluxe motherboard is well equipped - there are nine 3.0Gb/s SATA connectors that can be
Paired up to make an Intel® Matrix Storage SATA RAID 0,1.5 and 10 on at least six of these SATA connectors.
The SATA ports are set at 90 degrees so as not to interfere with larger PCI-e cards, there are 6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports next to the IDE Socket.
Plus 1 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (black) and 2 x SATA 3Gb/s (dark blue and gray) Just below the PCH
There is a total of 14xUSB 2.0 ports, 6 which are on the board next to the power and reset switch and 8 at the back panel.
The 1394a Header can be connected to the PCI bracket or case
There is three switches at the top of the board that can provide extra power to the memory, integrated memory controller and the CPU that allow for over voltages to become available in the BIOS.
The default values are CPU 0.85 - 1.75v, IMC max 1.7v, Dram max 2.0v
switched OV Values are CPU 1.25 - 2.1v, IMC max 1.9v, Dram max 2.5v
MemOK is a feature that is pretty neat it is a little red button with the purpose to allow the system to boot through running a number of algorithms in order to ensure the memory is stable enough to boot the system at the set values
TurboV socket for remote connection
Realtek RTl8110SC - Gigabit Ethernet controller, and Via VT6308P - 1394
On the rear of the motherboard we have the I/O section which has the Audio Ports, 6xUSB 2.0, 2xLAN (RJ-45), 1xIEEE 1394a, Optical S/PD, Coaxial S/PD, Cmos Clear button, PS/2 mouse port and PS/2 keyboard port
Specifications
- CPU: Intel Core i7/Core i5 Processors (Socket LGA1156)
- Chipset: Intel P55 Express
- Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM 2133(OC) / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz (Max. 16GB) / Dual Channel / Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)
- Expansion slots: 3x PCIe 2.0 x16 Slots, 2x PCIe x1 Slots & 2x PCI Slots (Supports ATI CrossFireX & NVIDIA SLI Technology)
- Storage: 1x Ultra DMA 133/100/66, 8x SATA 3Gb/s (RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10) & 1x eSATA 3Gb/s
- LAN: Dual Gigabit LAN (RTL8112L & RTL8110SC)
- Audio: VT2020 10-channel High Definition Audio CODEC
- 2x IEEE 1394a
- 14x USB 2.0
- 1x PS/2 Keyboard
- 1x PS/2 Mouse
- 1x S/PDIF Out (Optical)
- 1x S/PDIF Out (Coaxial)
- 16+3 Phase Power Design
- TurboV Processor
- Auto Tuning
- TurboV
- TurboV Remote
- Turbo Key
- Xtreme Phase
- T.Probe Microchip
- MemOK!
- Drive Xpert
- EPU
- Stack Cool3+ (2+2oz)
- Q-LED
- Q-Slot (VGA)
Price: £166.75
The bios is very nicely laid out with plenty of features' but is not to complicated like some I have used in the past, it offers full functionality.
I will not boar you too much but here are a few pictures of the Bios.
let's take a look at what Asus P7P55D Deluxe offers.
One of my favourite features on this motherboard has to be Express gate, this Technology developed by ASUS utilizes Splash top, it is a Linux environment that is integrated onto the motherboard. With this technology users can turn on their computer and in five seconds be able to access the Web, online games, photo's, chat, Skype all without having to wait for the operating system to load.
Test System
Intel I5 750 running 4000Mhz for all tests.
4GB Kingston DDR3-1600MHz Cas 8 memory running at 2000MHz Cas 8
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe
ASUS MATRIX GTX285/HTDI/1GD3/A using186.18Forceware
Samsung HD322HJ
Enermax 1000W PSU
Windows 7 32-bit stock install and no tweaks.
A quick look at the CPU
Intel core i5 750 PROCESSOR 2.66GHZ part with 8MB CACHE: Price £152.49 inc. VAT
Kingston KHX1600C8D3K2/GX 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL8 DIMM (Kit of 2) XMP Standard 256M X 64 Non-ECC 1600MHz 240-pin Unbuffered DIMM (DDR3, 1.65V, CL8, FBGA: PRICE TO BE CONFIRMED BUT SHOULD BE AROUND £85
First I wanted to play around with the TurboV controller to see what it could do so did not apply any overclock as I wanted to see what this could do on its own.
Auto, the first screen we can see is the Auto settings which allow the user to apply their own settings
Easy, Much the same as above but without advance settings
Auto, this is where things get interesting, TurboV will overclock the motherboard testing settings as it goes to make sure they are stable, this was great to use but it did not change any of the memory timings.
Warning.
Now for the Auto tests
The TurboV controller, this item has Eight button on it
1: on or off.
2:Turbo Key A
3:Turbo Key B
4:Turbo Key C
5&6:Bus speed + -
7 :EPU Manual mode
8:EPU Auto Mode
Using the Bus speed control
EPU 6 Engineis a complete power saving solution.
First test was to see just how far I could push the Kingston memory, I was amassed at these sticks as they could hit 2000MHz Cas 8 1.72V and this is the speed I tested them at for the past few days.
Then tests on the CPU to see what sort of stable clocks it could offer me with the stock air cooler
For testing I used a number of synthetic benchmarks, Supper Pi, Wprime, Pifast, 3Dmark, Everest
Supper PI 32M
Wprime
PIfast
Cinebench
3Dmark03
3Dmark05
3Dmark06
Everest catch and memory at 4000MHz
Everest catch and memory stock settings
Conclusion.
ASUS have made a fantastic motherboard with full factuality plus so much more, in the 4days of testing this motherboard it did not miss a beat and stayed on track all the time pushing the components far beyond their limits all with just air for cooling, the express gate is something that I have always been a big fan off so having a top notch overclocking motherboard that has much more is a win win for me, the handy The TurboV controller is a nice touch and allows the user simple overclocking or power saving options.
ASUS have made overclocking extremely easy and safe on this board and this is possible through a combination of hardware and software methods. The TurboV EVO chip is onboard to work with TurboV EVO (OC tuning software) with Auto Tuning support and TurboV Key (turns your power button into OC button) and go one step further, ASUS have even bundle this board with TurboV remote control that allows you to overclock your system in real-time when playing games or running applications without the need to exit the program plus you can even pre-set some OC profiles and load them up instantly or increase the BCLK 1MHz at a time.
What can I say about core i5 well it will not suppress the socket 1366 core i7 platforms it just was not designed with this in mind but I am sure that it will take over from the Core 2 series as there is a big performance increase to be had with this new platform with energy saving from the 32nm CPU this platform is a win win situation in my eyes
ASUS has done a another masterful job with the P7P55D Deluxe it has a good bundle of software and accessories , good overclocking and all the extra features a user could ever want.
This product is a must for is ease of overclocking plus all given the added features that it offers makes this product had not to have, coupled with the core i5 750 and Kingston Memory and for these reasons alone make this product a must have for all users.
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Originally Posted by LardArse
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