ASUS Z8PE-D12 Server Motherboard Review :: Board Layout

The Z8PE-D12 motherboard is a SSI EEB form factor motherboard. The Server System Infrastructure has three sizes of motherboards which are SSE CEB (305X267mm), SSI EEB (305X330mm), and SSI MEB (411X330mm). What this means is you will need a case or rack mount that will fit this size of motherboard.

Board

Memory slots

CPU1

CPU2

Starting on upper right hand corner of the board we find six DIMM slots for up to 48GB of Registered/Unbuffered DDR3 memory. To install two CPUs requires that you install two sets of memory and if you intend to install triple channel memory, two sets of at least 3 memory sticks is required. The memory is color coded to designate what is triple channel memory.

DIMM slots

Power

5520 IOH

NEC chip

To the left of the DIMM slots is the first LGA-1366 Sockets assigned to the 6 memory slots. The next item on the board is an 8-pin followed by a 24-pin followed by a further 8-pin power connector. As each Intel CPU can take up to 125W of power the extra juice is necessary compared to a normal Intel board for a single CPU that normally requires a single 8-pin and a 24-pin power connector.

6 SATA

8 SATA

FP I/O

Fan headers

The second CPU Socket is located to the left of the power connectors. To the left of the CPU Socket is the second set of 6 DIMM Sockets bringing the total supported by the motherboard to 96GB of memory. The Intel 5520 IOH is located to the left of the second set of DIMM slots, with the ICH10R Southbridge above that on the board.

ICS chip

Realtek RTL820IN

Expansion

Rear I/O

The bottom of the board starts off with the CPUFan header for the 2nd CPU. This is followed by two Front Fan headers. There is an IDE port with another two Front Fan headers to round out the bottom of the board. The left side of the board starts off with the Front Panel I/O for the board. This is followed by 14 SATA 2 ports and the two PIKE slots.

The expansion on this board consists of an audio slot, four PCI Express Generation 2.0 x16 slots and two PCI slots. Audio is installed via a MIO audio card and the onboard video consists of an ASPeed controller. The Rear I/O on the board consists of a PS/2 mouse and Keyboard port, two USB 2.0 ports a COM1 port, a VGA output and three RJ-45 jacks for the onboard GIGABIT LANs.