ASUS P6T SE Motherboard Review :: Layout

The LGA-1366 CPU socket is surrounded by low-profile solid capacitors and PWMs. There is plenty of room for after-market CPU coolers. On the right side of the CPU is a heatsink covering the MOSFETs. The left side has the X58 Northbridge which has a heatsink covering it. A heatpipe leads out another heatsink covering the back area of the motherboard.

As noted in the Features page, the board supports up to three way CrossfireX with three like ATI cards installed in the two purple PCI Express x16 slots and a third card installed in the PCI Express x16 slot that is white. The other expansion slots on the board include a PCI Express x1 slot and two PCI slots. To install two slot cards the adjacent slot also needs to be empty.

The board has 3 USB 2.0 and a single IEEE-1394 header. This brings the total USB ports on the board possible to 12 with the 6 that are on the I/O panel. There are three 3-pin fan headers and a single 4-pin header for the CPU Fan on the board. One 3-pin header is next to the FP IO, the Chassis Fan header is below the SB, and the last 3-pin header is located below the memory next to the Power button and 24-pin connector. The 4-pin CPU fan header is in a weird spot, below the heatpipe above the first PCI Express x16 Generation 2.0 slot.

The 8-pin power connector is above the rear heatsink, making for easy routing from the PSU. The 24-pin connector is next to the 3-pin fan connector that is below the DIMM Sockets. There are six DIMM Sockets on the board allowing for the installation of up to 24GB of DDR3 memory in triple channel mode. Note, that to install three DIMMs into the sockets, you should use alternating orange sockets. This will ensure proper boot. The board comes with a sticker warning against using DIMMs with voltage rating above 1.65V which may damage the CPU.

There are six SATA ports on the board, the maximum that the ICH10R Southbridge supports. Four of them are sideways angled, allowing for the installation of long video cards like the GeForce GTX285 OR ATI Radeon HD 4890 without blocking a SATA port as some motherboards will tend to do. A single sideways angled IDE port is located next to the SATA ports. The board supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 modes via the Intel ICH10R chipset. A Realtek RTL8111D PHY controls the onboard Gigabit LA. The EPU2 chip lies above the DIMM slots.

Onboard audio is provided by a Realtek ALC1200 CODEC. This CODEC is among the most popular audio CODECS on the market today. The ALC1200 supports Jack-Detection, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking. Coaxial/Optical S/PDIF out ports on the back IO and ASUS Noise Filtering. The ALC 1200 is the latest from Realtek in fact their website doesn't even list it as of yet. The drivers off the Driver CD install the audio without problem, and in fact the latest HD drivers from Realtek work as well. The ALC1200 is High Definition Audio compatible meaning that it can do 7.1 surround sound+ a second stream at 2 channels.

The rear IO on the board consists of the standard PS/2 mouse, keyboard ports, six USB 2.0 ports, Optical, Coaxial S/PDIF ports, a IEEE1394a port, an external SATA port, a Gigabit LAN port and six audio jacks for the onboard audio. The inclusion of both a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port is rather interesting as most people will have migrated to USB versions of these devices already. The rear IO is fully featured for anyone wanting to install a device. ASUS went the extra mile by including external SATA and Firewire on the board.