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ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Motherboard Review
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Price: £168.95 inc vat
Supplier: Kustom PCs
Manufacturer: ASUS

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First impressions

The board certainly looks the business with its black and orange colour scheme. The box itself is not noticably different in size than that of other motherboards, but does feel a bit heavy. That's beacuse ASUS has bundled so many extra features and accessories with the P5W DH Deluxe. Judging by the bundle and the name "Digital Home", it seems that ASUS had an HTPC or media centre PC in mind while designing the board. More on that later.

First of all, lets have a look at the detailed technical specifications:

CPU

• LGA775 socket for Intel® Pentium 4/Celeron CPU
• Support Intel Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition & Intel Pentium® D Processor
• Support Intel 65nm, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme
• Support Intel next generation Multi-Core CPU
• Compatible with Intel 05B/ 05A and 04B/04A processors
• Intel EM64T and Hyper-Threading Technology ready
  

Chipset

• Intel 975X
• Intel ICH7R

Front Side Bus

1066/ 800 MHz
 
Memory

• Dual channel memory architecture
• 4 x 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. 8GB DDR2 800/ 667/ 533 ECC and non-ECC memory
• Intel MPT (Intel Memory Pipeline Technology)
• ASUS Hyper Path3

 
Expansion Slots

• 2 x PCI Express x 16 slot for discrete graphics card
• 2 x PCI Express x 1
• 3 x PCI

 
CrossFire

• Support ATI CrossFire graphics cards (both @ x8 mode)
• ASUS two-slot thermal design
• ASUS PEG Link
• Advanced Thermal Design
• ASUS 8-Phase Power Design
• ASUS Stack Cool2
• ASUS Fanless Design: Heat-pipe Thermal solution

 
Storage/RAID

 
Intel ICH7R SouthBridge:

• 1 x UltraDMA 100/66/33
• 3 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with Intel® Matrix Storage Technology with RAID 0, 1, 5 support
  
  

Jmicron JMB363 controller

• 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66
• 1 x External Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s (ASUS SATA-on-the-Go) and 1 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with RAID 0, 1, JBOD support
  
  

Silicon Image 4723 Hardware RAID controller (ASUS EZ-Backup)
 

• 2 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with RAID 0, 1 support
• Support RAID 10 cross Intel® ICH7R and Silicon Image 4723 controller

 

LAN

• Dual Gigabit LAN controllers
• 2 x Marvell 88E8053 Gigabit LAN Controller, both featuring AI NET2
• Wireless LAN: 54Mbps IEEE 802.11g (ASUS WiFi-AP Solo^TM)

Audio

• Realtek ALC882M High Definition Audio 8-channel CODEC
• Support Multi-streaming, Jack-sensing and Jack-retasking functions
• Anti Pop Function
• Coaxial, Optical S/PDIF out on back I/O port
• Features Dolby Master Studio technology
  - Dolby Prologic IIX
  - Dolby Headphone 
  - Dolby Virtual Speaker
  - Dolby Digital Live

IEEE 1394a

• TI 1394 controller supports 2 x 1394a ports

 
USB

• Max. 8 USB2.0/1.1 ports

 
ASUS Digital Home Accessories

• 1 x Asus DH Remote^TM
• 1 x ASUS DH Remote^TM Receiver
• 1 x ASUS MP3-In^TM module
• 1 x ASUS WiFi-AP Solo Antenna
• 2 x ASUS EZ-Backup^TM SATA cables

 
ASUS AI Lifestyle Features

• Stack Cool 2 patented fanless cooling system
• "SATA on the Go" External SATA connector
• AI Quiet

Overclocking Features

• AI NOS^TM (Non-delay Overclocking System)
• ASUS PEG Link
• Precision Tweaker: 
  - vDIMM: 12-step DRAM voltage control 
  - vCore: Adjustable CPU voltage at 0.0125 increment 
  - SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection): allowing FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 400MHz at 1MHz increment 
  - PCIe x16 Frequency: allowing PCIe x16 frequency from 90MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment"
• AI Overclocking (intelligent CPU frequency tuner)
• Adjustable FSB/DDR ratio. Fixed PCI/PCIe frequencies.
• ASUS AI Booster utility
• ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)

Other ASUS Special Features

• CrashFree BIOS 3
• EZ-Flash2
• Q-Fan2
• Multi-language BIOS
• MyLogo2

BIOS

• 8 Mb Flash ROM,AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3

Manageability

• WOL by PME, WOR by PME, Chassis Intrusion, PXE & RPL

 
Back Panel I/O Ports

• 1 x Serial Port
• 1 x Optical + 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF Output
• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard
• 1 x PS/2 Mouse
• 2 x RJ45
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1
• 1 x IEEE1394a
• 1 x External SATA port
• 1 x WiFi-AP Solo^TM antenna jack
• 8-Channel Audio I/O
  

Internal I/O Connectors

• 2 x USB 2.0 connectors supports additional 4 USB 2.0 ports
• 1 x IEEE1394a connector
• CPU /  2 x Chassis(system) / 2 x Power Fan connectors
• Front panel Audio connector
• ASUS EZ-Backup jumpers
• Chassis Intrusion connector
• CD audio-in connector
• MP3-In connector (Red)
• SPDIF out connector
• System panel connector
• Azalia Digital Header
• 24-pin ATX Power connector
• 4-pin EATX12V Power connector

 
Support CD

• Drivers
• Make RAID driver Disk for Intel ICH7R and JMB 363
• ASUS DH Remote Application
• ASUS WiFi-AP Solo^TM Wizard
• ASUS PC Probe 2
• ASUS LiveUpdate Utility
• InterVideo® Media Launcher (OEM version)
• Anti-virus software (OEM version)

ASUS Digital Home Features

• ASUS EZ-Backup^TM  
  -  2 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s support hardware RAID 0 or RAID 1 mode 
  -  Plug and play: Default setting in RAID 1 mode, no driver, no BIOS configuration required
  
  
• ASUS WiFi-AP Solo  
  54 Mbps IEEE 802.11g and backwards compatible with 11 Mbps IEEE 802.11b 
  - Software Access point mode  
  - Station mode : Infrastruceure mode and Ad-Hoc mode
  
  
• Asus DH Remote^TM  
  - Power 
  - Quick Power 
  - Noise Off 
  - EZ WiFi 
  - Full Screen 
  - AP Launch 
  - Media Control Zone
  
  
• ASUS MP3-In^TM

Accessories

• 1 x ASUS Q-Connector set (USB, 1394, system panel; Retail version only)
• InterVideo® MEDIA LAUNCHER Suite (OEM version)
• 1 x Optional Fan
• 1 x IEEE1394a port module
• 2 x SATA cables
• 1 x SATA power cable for 2 devices
• 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
• 1 x IDE cable
• 1 x FDD cable
• 1 x I/O Shield
• 1 x 2-port USB2.0 module
• User's manual

Form Factor

ATX Form Factor, 12"x 9.6"(30.5cm x 24.5cm)