For years, enthusiasts had to dip into workstation-class processors and motherboards to enjoy the creamy smoothness of multiprocessing. Today, however, the ascendance of dual-core desktop chips has made buttery-smooth multitasking an affordable reality with even the most basic of desktop boards. The relatively low price of dual-core desktop chips has also further smudged the blurry line between desktop PCs and low-end workstations, and the Asus' M2N32 WS Professional aims to further that trend. The board is based on the same M2N32 design that Asus has been tinkering with since early summer, and this time it's been tweaked and massaged with workstation applications in mind.

Apart from the name, the most obvious clue that we're dealing with a workstation-class product is the price. At over $260 online, the M2N32 WS Pro is by far the most expensive board in this roundup—and close to $70 more than Asus' M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition.

Asus doesn't dabble in daring cosmetic treatments with the Pro, but it does get the power plug placement right. Both power plugs are located along the edges of the board, and the auxiliary 12V line uses an eight-pin connector that should provide plenty of juice if your power supply supports it. The board is also compatible with PSUs that feature more common four-pin auxiliary 12V connectors.

Workstation users probably won't be rocking exotic CPU coolers, but the M2N32 leaves a decent amount of room around the CPU socket to get creative. Chipset and VRM cooling is handled by an intricate array of copper heatsinks and pipes that traverse the motherboard and do their best to imitate industrial art. Asus doesn't recommend relying on the passive chipset cooling if you're running a water-cooled system with no ambient airflow, though. For what it's worth, we didn't encounter any problems running the board on an open test bench with an active CPU cooler but no other ambient airflow.

The M2N32's storage cluster is a little tight, in part because there are two IDE ports and a whopping nine SATA ports. Combine that with the south bridge cooler's heatpipe and a handful of capacitors, and you start running into potential clearance problems. For example, when installed in the lower PCIe x16 slot, longer graphics cards like the GeForce 7900 GTX will obscure access to at least two of the board's red SATA ports. Those ports are connected to the nForce 590 SLI MCP, so they're probably the ones you'll want access to the most.

On a more positive note, none of the other SATA or IDE ports are blocked by beefy graphics cards. There's even enough room to easily operate the DIMM slot retention tabs when longer graphics cards are installed.

PCI Express peripherals are still relatively rare, and for workstation users heavily invested in networking, storage, or other hardware, PCI-X remains quite useful Fortunately, the M2N32 has been built to accommodate the PCI-X crowd; it features a pair of PCI-X slots powered by an NEC PCIe-to-PCI-X bridge chip. Users can configure the slots to both run at 100MHz, or they can opt to run a single slot at 133MHz. The bridge chip itself is connected to four PCI Express lanes, providing a healthy 2GB/s of bandwidth.

In addition to workstation-oriented PCI-X slots, the M2N32 also has a pair of PCIe x16 slots, two x1 slots, and a standard PCI slot. What's more, double-wide SLI configs will only cost you a single PCI-X and PCIe x1 slots, leaving plenty of additional options.

This is nitpicking a little, but I can't ignore the M2N32's PCIe x16 slot retention clips. The blue tab on the top slot is perfect, mostly because it's easy to use with double-wide coolers. While the black retention clip on the bottom slot is physically identical, it's over on the other side of the slot, where it will be obscured by a double-wide graphics cooler.

Around the rear, the M2N32's port cluster is loaded with just about everything you'd want, including external SATA, coaxial, and TOS-Link digital audio outputs, and even a parallel port. Some workstation folks might miss having a serial port, and they'll be out of luck, because the M2N32 doesn't even have onboard headers for one. Onboard headers are available for both of the board's Firewire ports and an additional six USB ports, though.

Workstation boards don't exactly cry out for in-the-box extras, but Asus throws a couple of goodies in with the M2N32. The first is a stereo microphone that Asus says will greatly improve recording quality in noisy environments. Far more useful, at least to us, is a set of small jumper blocks that make connecting front panel, USB, and Firewire headers much easier when a motherboard is already installed in a case. Asus has included these jumper blocks on most of its recent motherboards, and as far as we're concerned, they should be standard equipment on every motherboard.