Ok so I finally put all the hardware together to do a test setup and make sure that everything is functioning correctly before I add the water blocks and the phase change cooling.
The Asus P7P55D Premium motherboard, an amazing motherboard.
Ok so I have worked with hundreds of motherboards before in the past. And I think it’s fair to say there are some very cool very useful features built into the Asus P7P55D Deluxe Motherboard. It looks and feels like a very a well made product which I have come to expect from anything I buy from Asus. But there are features here that most people overlook, that are very useful indeed.
First and most obvious is the Turbo V dongle. If nothing else this gives you a power button right on your monitor that allows you to turn the system on and off. Most people would be happy with that but I love the fact that I will be able to change the over clocking by the touch of a button on the same panel on the fly. I can even modify the bus speed settings on the fly. Asus definitely was thinking about over clocker’s when they made this board. You can also set the EPU settings on the fly. Letting you save energy at your leisure.
Speaking of over clocking on the top right corner of the board itself are 3 switches. These switches allow you to change the advanced CPU, Integrated Memory Controller (IMC), and DRAM over voltages in the bios.
You turn the board on and an amazing thing happens. So simple I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before but am very happy that someone finally added it to their board. As the Asus P7P55D Deluxe board boots up it has Post state LEDs that actually light up as they test each individual area on the board before it posts. It starts next to the CPU and then the DRAM followed by the GPU and finally the BOOT Device LED. Once it starts to boot all the LEDs are out and the screen starts to post. I had an issue with my memory clock. I instantly knew what it was by simply watching the LEDs and seeing it got hung up on the DRAM_LED.
Speaking of the memory, and me having a problem with my clock speed, I simply hit the MemOK button and the Asus P7P55D board started doing some amazing things. Basically I turned the system back on after modifying the clock speed on the Memory; it stopped at the DRAM_LED and just stayed there. So I figure why not let’s see what this button here does (Kind of like a big red button for the motherboard). Suddenly the board turns itself off, and as I start to think it failed it turns back on. It starts to test itself with the CPU as normal but when it gets to the memory it just sits there and blinks. I’m curious, so I keep watching and sure enough it turns itself off again. It does this like 5 times each time the blinking LED gets faster. On the 6th boot it turns on. I hit the delete key and sure enough it has automatically changed the memory settings to what it believes is the best the settings for my memory. It was very odd yet it saved me rebooting and trying over and over again to get those settings. I think Asus is on to some awesome ideas here.
Like I said the board is full of features without having anything plugged into it, it has 8 USB ports in the back, along with a standard ps2 keyboard and mouse port, optical and SPDIF out puts, 2 gigabit network ports, 10 channel audio out with mic port, a place for the Turbo V to go through, and of course last but not least is the 1394 port. This doesn’t include the fact that it has 4 more USB ports, a serial port, 6 SATA ports, 2 ESATA ports, a EIDE port, 2xPCIe 2.0 x16 ports, 2x PCI Ports, 2x PCIe 2.0 X1 ports, 4 DDR 3 ram Ports, a power button onboard, a reset button onboard, a place to plug in all your own LEDs and buttons and of course the socket 1156 Intel port. There isn’t anything more you could ask for in a motherboard.
There is a lot more to post about the over clocking capabilities of this board and I will be posting more information on that in the not so distant future, but as I was testing this system I started making notes and I had to share them with all of you. I am impressed with this board and I’m not easily impressed when it comes to computer equipment.