ASUS P5B-E Motherboard Review :: ASUS P5B-E Layout

The layout of the board is excellent in most respects. The 4-pin power connector is located directly above the CPU cooler area on the right corner of the board, making routing of the cable from the PSU very easy The 24-pin power connector is further along the left side of the board than I'm used to but doesn't interfere with the IDE or FDD controller like some boards would.

4-pin power

24-pin power

CPU area

Floppy

DIMM slots

The CPU area is clear of obstructions allowing the installation of after-market cooling devices. This board is compatible with the Quad Core QX6700 and Core 2 CPUs, meaning if you want the new CPUs you can use them on it. There are four memory slots that can take up to 8GB of DDR2 800MHz memory. With the release of Windows Vista to retail early in the next year, the 64-bit Operating System reaches the mainstream, and 8GB or more will be the defacto standard for memory support in the motherboard market.

Expansion

PCI Express x1 slot

PCI Express x1 slots

PCI Express x16 lock

The board went all out on expansion options except for the exclusion of a second PCI Express slot for SLI or Crossfire. There are three PCI Express x1 slots on the board, as well as three PCI slots, giving the full range of options if you want to install another SATA RAID controller or a Creative Labs SoundBlaster X-Fi sound card or if you want to install a TV Tuner card like the TV Wonder 650 from AMD.

Northbridge

Southbridge

Capacitors

CPUFan and Chassis fan header

Rear IO

USB and Firewire header

ASUS chose to cool both the North and South Bridges with a heatsink only. There isn't an exotic Heatpipe solution as some of the high-end ASUS boards are wont to have, but it does the job. There are two fan headers on the board, with the CPUfan header being of the 4-pin type. A USB header and a IEEE-1394 header brings the total on the board to 6 USB ports and 2 Firewire ports available. Six SATA ports are on the board itself with an e-SATA port on the back panel.

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