The Ultimate Home For Your Core 2 Duo? Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition Review- Page 2/7
August 11, 2006
By
Thomas Soderstrom
Layout and Features
The P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition prominently features a small heatpipe cooler, with a radiator that also cools some of the voltage regulator components. The upper edge of the board also has mounting holes for a large MOSFET sink, but with no sink mounted there.
Six slots mark a normal configuration for modern boards -- a seventh slot is a rare find and five are unfortunately too common. Asus provides three PCI, one PCI Express x16, one PCI Express x1, and one PCI Express x4 slots, and the x4 uses an x16 bracket to allow the addition of x8 or x16 cards at x2 or x4 speeds.
Both x16 slots feature latches on the reverse side, easing card removal. The traditional position would be blocked by the card cooler.
Like most new boards, the P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition uses 24-pin and 8-pin power, somewhat conveniently located on the board’s front and top edges. The 8-pin ATX12v connector also has a removable black plastic plug covering four pins, to assist those few builders using older 4-pin power supplies.
Six internal SATA ports are supported by the ICH8R on-chipset, RAID capable controller. The familiar JMicron PCI-Express-to-ATA/SATA controller supports one internal ATA header, as well as eSATA and a another (oddly placed) internal SATA port.
The back panel features old-fashioned PS/2 and Serial ports, Digital Coaxial and Digital Optical S/P-DIF audio connectors, a 1394 FireWire port, eSATA port, six analog audio connections, two Gigabit LAN ports, and four SATA ports. Also fed through the cover plate is the antenna for the optional WiFi adapter module. Lacking, however, is a parallel port breakout header. That should worry few, however, since USB adapters are both cheap and plentiful.
Events
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
