ASUS Commando Motherboard Review :: ASUS Commando Layout

The layout of the Commando board is excellent in almost every respect. The CPU area is totally clear of obstacles, meaning that the use of after-market cooling solutions is easy and painless. The 24-pin power connector is second to the right on the bottom area of the PCB, meaning that the floppy cable and then the 24-pin power cable are positioned.

The 8-pin power connector is on the upper right of the PCB allowing for easy routing from the PSU of the cable. There are four memory DIMM slots on the board, providing support for up to 16GB of unbuffered non-ECC DDR2 memory rated at up to 800MHz, other memory may work, but is not natively supported.

USB Headers

Firewire Header

Fan Headers

24-pin power and memory slots

Three USB headers are located on the far left of the board, bringing the total supported by the board to 10. A second IEEE-1394 header is also present, bringing that total to two Firewire ports available on the board. Five fan headers, including the CPUFan header are on the board. Three of them are positioned on the far left hand side of the board, meaning that case fans will easily attach.

Power Reset, Clear CMOS Buttons

One of the special features of the board is the inclusion of a Power, a Reset and a Clr CMOS button. This allows the end-user to effortlessly turn on and off the computer while the computer is outside a case, allowing testing of individual computer components outside the case without hassle.

Southbridge

Northbridge

Fin

Front Panel IO

The Northbridge and Southbridge is cooled by ASUS's Heatpipe technology. A HeatPipe is different from a heatsink in that the heat is transferred from the chip to the heatsink to a fin. There are two pipes leading out from the Northbridge out to the Southbridge out to a fin that is above the CPU cooling area. In operation, the system worked well with no heat-related crashes.

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