ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution Review :: ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution Layout

The CPU area of the board is clear of obstacles with rows of Japan-made Solid Capacitors along all four sides of the CPU Socket. Note that these capacitors will not leak as some motherboard capacitors tend to do and have a life of around 50000 hours. ASUS says that they have a full 16+2 phase VRM design with 16 phases to the vCore 2 phases to Vdram/QPI controller. The CPU Socket itself is the standard LGA-1366 Socket.

Under the CPU socket is the memory slots. ASUS outfits this board with 6 DIMM slots, allowing for up to 12GB of Triple Channel DDR3-1600MHz memory. Note that the maximum memory speed officially supported by the Core i7 CPUs is 1333MHz, but DDR3-1600MHz is supported through overclocking. The P6T6 WS Revolution supports a QPI of 6.4GT/second, when a 965 XE CPU is installed. Next to the CPU Socket on the right hand side is the MOSFET heatsinks.

ASUS decided to go with a passive cooling solution for the chips on the board. The Southbridge and nForce 200 chips are covered with a heatsink that has the Workstation logo on it. There is a heatpipe that leads to the Northbridge which is covered by a heatsink with the ASUS logo on it. Another heatpipe leads from the NB to the rear heatsink. Everything is low profile, allowing for video cards to be installed in the PCI Express x16 slots without issue.

One thing that sticks out to you right off the bat is the inclusion of not two, not three but six PCI Express x16 Generation 2 slots. The board allows you to install up to three NVIDIA or three ATI cards in SLI mode or Crossfire mode. With six slots that means that you can easily install three dual-slot cards without issue as to another PCI Express x1 or PCI card in the way. PCI Express slots are by nature backwards compatible with lower rated cards, so a PCI Express x1 card or a PCI Express x4 card will work just fine in one of the PCI Express x16 slots if needed.

Starting on the right hand side, the 8-pin power connector is located in the perfect spot for easy direct cable management from the PSU. The CPU Fan header is located under the MOSFET heatsink. On the bottom right hand corner lays a jumper with the OV CPU moniker. If you change the setting of the voltage jumper on the motherboard, it automatically over volts the CPU to a higher voltage for overclocking. To the left of the jumper is an ITE chip. To the left of the ITE chip is the 24-pin power connector. To the right and left of the 24-pin power connector are the fan headers.

Drive expansion is rather unique for the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution board. There are two SAS ports and six SATA ports in a sideways facing position. The positioning of the SATA and SAS ports allows the user to install long video cards without worrying about SATA cables. Intel has tried to get rid of legacy IDE and FDD ports on their X58 chipset and the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution has neither of these legacy ports. SATA DVD and Blu-Ray disc players abound and there really isn't a reason to support FDD with Vista.

The left side of the board starts off with the Front Panel IO connectors. Each connector is labeled on the board itself, allowing for easy installation of the case wires without problems as to knowing which wire goes to which connector. Above the FP IO is another fan connector. To the left of the FP IO lies the Battery. To the left of the Battery is the Clear RTC jumper to clear the CMOS and the Chassis Open jumper.

Next to the jumpers is the connection to where the GP Diagnosis card is connected to. The board has three USB 2.0 headers to provide support for up to 12 USB 2.0 devices when combined with the rear IO. Next to the headers are the CD In and SPDIF connections. The Audio FP connection lies next to the CD In connection.

Onboard audio is provided by the Analog Devices Incorporated ADI 2000B 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC. This CODEC features Multi-Streaming (7.1+2 channel FP Audio), Jack Sensing, Front Panel Jack Re-tasking, SPDIF support and ASUS Noise Filter support. The 2000B also supports Creative's EAX effects up to 4.0, while the majority of onboard sound can't. ADI 2000B is a true add-on replacement and the sound is excellent.

The rear IO on the board consists of a single PS/2 mouse/keyboard port, 6 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Realtek GigE Ethernet ports, 2 external SATA ports, 6 jacks for the onboard audio SPDIF optical and RCA component audio output ports. Note the lack of legacy ports here, with the exception of the singular PS/2 port, everything is up to date. No COM port, nor Parallel port on this Rear IO. Also note the external SATA ports and lack of Firewire ports.