ASUS P7P55D Premium Motherboard Review :: Layout

Board

Right Side

8-pin power

PEM

Starting on the upper right hand corner we find that ASUS has put their TurboV remote connector in the position we normally find the 8-pin power connector. The PEM chip works with the EPU chip and VRM chip to correctly set the power phases. Below the TurboV Remote connector is where ASUS has placed the 8-pin power connection. To the left of the 8-pin power connector is where the CPUFan header is located.

Over voltage

CPU Socket

CPU area

Back of board

Next to the CPU Fan header are three switches for overvoltage. Flipping a switch allows you to overvolt the CPU, the DRAM and the internal memory controller. The Power Fan header is next to the overvoltage switches. The MOSFETs are covered by a heatpipe with a heatsink covering both sides surrounding the CPU area.

Memory

DIMM Sockets

Heatsinks

ICS chip

The CPU Socket itself has plenty of clearance for after-market CPU Coolers. A row of low profile Solid Capacitors surrounds two sides of the CPU Socket as well as the VRM circuitry that has 33 phases. The memory is located below the CPU Socket. The P7P55D Premium motherboard has four DIMM sockets that hold up to 16GB of unbuffered non-ECC DDR3 memory clocked up to 2200MHz when overclocked.

Winbond chip

COM1

24-pin power

P55 PCH

The bottom edge starts off with a Winbond chip, followed by a COM1 chip. The MemOK button is next followed by the 24-pin power connector and the IDE connector. Memory compatibility is always a problem and sometimes memory simply doesn’t work due to timings or other problems. ASUS has alleviated the stress by including a group of settings that are not very aggressive and should work with any memory. Push the button and the memory goes into that “Safe Mode”.

SATA ports

IDE

FP IO

SATA ports

ASUS includes a variety of storage options for the motherboard. Four sideways facing SATA ports are colored blue and are the 3 Gb/second standard SATA ports. To the right of those ports are two SATA 6 Gb/second ports that are the primary focus of this new motherboard. The left edge of the motherboard starts off with the Front Panel IO connectors as well as the two other SATA 3 Gb/second ports that the P55 Express chipset supports.

USB headers

PLX chip

VIA IDE controller

Power and Reset

Two USB headers brings the total supported by the board to 10 with six supported on the Rear I/O. A Power and Reset button are next, providing support for the DIY system builder that wants to test the motherboard outside of the box. Above the COM1 port is the TurboV chip that is the overclocking processor I talked about earlier. A Marvell 08SE123-NAA2 chip controls the SATA 6Gb/second ports. A IEEE-1394 header, a SPDIF Out header and the AAFP header round out the left side of the board.

Expansion

Marvell SATA controller

TPM chip

Chassis fan

The P7P55D Premium board has six slots for expansion. There are two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, two PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots (2.5GT/s) and two PCI 2.2 compliant slots. The PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots are separated by the two PCI slots, meaning that you can install two dual-slot PCI Express video cards while having a PCI slot and a PCIe x1 slot free for other expansion uses. This board supports Quad-SLI or Crossfire using two dual GPU cards. The PCI Express x16 slots each has ASUS’s .

VIA VT2020 sound chip

CD-In and AAFP

Realtek RTL8111C

I/O

ASUS uses a VIA VT2020 Envy chip for the onboard audio on the P7P55D Premium motherboard. The VT2020 is an ASUS branded VT1828S chip from VIA. This CODEC fully supports the High Definition Audio standard and supports such features as multi-streaming, Blu-ray and HD-DVD Audio Content Protection, VoIP, Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), Beam Forming and Noise Suppression technologies. Vinyl VT2020 supports, QSound, DTS Connect, Dolby Digital Live, Dolby PCEE program, SRS Labs and Creative sound.

The P7P55D Premium sports legacy PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports. As the board is more mainstream than the X58 chipset in terms of price, the inclusion does not hurt the board. Eight USB ports are on the board, making the total 12. S/PDIF out Coaxial and Optical ports are present as well as the six audio jacks for the onboard audio. A single Firewire port and two RJ-45 jacks supported by a Realtek RTL8111C chip rounds out the I/O.