ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer Motherboard Review :: Layout

The 8-pin power connector is located on the top right hand side of the board under the PS/2 combo port. The CPU Socket is surrounded on four sides with a heatsink next to the 8-pin power connector. A heatpipe leads to the Supercomputer plate. The top heatsink covering the MOSFETS has another heatpipe leading to another heatsink with another pipe leading to the Supercomputer plate. A third heatsink is on the bottom of the board with another heat pipe leading to the Supercomputer plate.

There's plenty of space around the CPU Socket to install after-market CPU coolers and in fact we used a large, tall CPU cooler without problem as to clearance. Next to the right-most heatsink is the CPU Fan header with four prongs. Below the CPU Socket are six DIMM Slots for up to 24GB of DDR3 memory of either the ECC or non-ECC variety. DDR3-1333MHz is natively supported but you can get up to DDR3-2000 if you overclock.

The first thing that stands out from this board when you take it out of the packaging is the Supercomputer plate that covers the X58 chip and the two NF200 bridge chips. Three heat pipes lead out to different heatsinks around the board as already described. The bottom of the board has a three pin fan header, the 24-pin power connector, another 3-pin fan header and the SATA/SAS ports on the board.

Seven PCI Express x16 slots on a motherboard, who would have thought we'd ever see the day. The P6T7 WS Supercomputer motherboard has seven slots with each slot supporting a single slot video card or lesser PCI Express device. The bandwidth provided to each slot is as follows: PCIe 2.0 x16_1 (at x16 or x8 mode), PCIe 2.0 x16_2 (at x8 mode), PCIe 2.0 x16_3 (at x16 or x8 mode), PCIe 2.0 x16_4 (at x8 mode), PCIe 2.0 x16_5 (at x16 or x8 modes), PCIe 2.0 x16_6 (at x8 mode), PCIe 2.0 x16_7 (at x16 mode). Best installation practice is Quadro slot 1, Tesla 1-3 in slots 3, 5, 7 to give best performance. You can also install four dual-GPU graphics cards ala GeForce GTX295. The board has six SATA ports and two SAS ports. SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI. SAS is backwards compatible with SATA devices, meaning you can use SATA devices in the two SAS ports if you wish. SAS has the benefits of tagged command queuing, support for numerous devices besides the DVD/CD/HDDs that the SATA protocol supports and multipath I/O which SATA 1.5 Gb/second does not support. SAS uses the SCSI commands and has higher signal voltage allowing cables up to 8m in length compared to 1m on SATA.

Soundmax driver screenshots

Onboard audio is provided by an Analog Devices Incorporated ADI AD2000b chip which is a AD1989b chip modified for ASUS uses. The AD2000b chip supports six Analog to Digital Converters with 96KHz at 95dB, independent sample rates from 8KHz to 96KHz, and 16, 20 and 24-bit PCM resolution. The ADI 2000B is also used on the SupremeFX X-Fi sound cards found on some of ASUS's gaming motherboards such as the Rampage II Formula. The AD2000B also supports ADI's Sonic Focus technology which focuses the sound in selected situations.

The Front Panel I/O is next. ASUS includes a Q-Connector that allows the connections to be connected to the Q-Connector then installed on the motherboard with one plug in. It's pretty neat and allows the cables to be stretched further as well. Another three pin fan connector is to the right of the FP I/O. The next thing on the motherboard is rather unique. There is a set of pins next labeled TPM. This is where you install your GP Diagnostics card included with the motherboard. Three USB headers and a Firewire header are next, followed by the SPDIF Out, the CD In and AAFP pins.

The rear I/O on the board consists of a PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard combination port, six USB 2.0 ports, a S/PDIF Out port, an Optical Out port, two external SATA ports, two Gigabit LAN jacks and the 6 jacks for the onboard HD Audio. The need for a PS/2 mouse or keyboard has been alleviated by the multitude of USB mice and keyboards, but it is nice to have the fallback if your mouse or keyboard is of the PS/2 variety. The Gigabit LANs are controlled by two Realtek RTL8111C PHYS chipsets. A Marvell 88SE6121 chip controls the external SATA ports and a Via VT6315N chip controls the Firewire port.