This feeling of excellent design and high build quality is repeated wherever you look on the P7P55D Deluxe. The passive coolers on the power regulation hardware look superb and are secured with screws rather than plastic pop pins. The illuminated Power and Reset micro buttons are the usual quality Asus items, the black PCB looks very smart, and the memory slots make life easy as they only use a single retaining clip for each DDR 3 module.
Good, solid power regulation hardware around the LGA1156 socket
The I/O panel looks relatively bare but despite that it packs digital audio, one Firewire, two Gigabit Ethernet and eight USB ports along with a bracket that carries two USB ports and an eSATA connector. Legacy support includes two PS/2 ports and an ATA-133 connector.
Only one clip per memory slot for easy module swaps
Once we got to grips with the Bios settings and realised that the Asus requires very little extra power to achieve high clock speeds, we were impressed by the performance of the P7P55D Deluxe. Specifically we found that an offset figure of +0.2V core voltage works better than a fixed core voltage with the result that our CPU would run at 3.96GHz.
The combination of superb build quality, a long list of features and a fair price make the Asus P7P55D Deluxe a strong contender for any high-end PC.
Reg Rating 85
Price £151 Click here for the best online price
More Info Asus' website
COMMENTS
Foxconn sockets
Something to bear in mind if you're planning on serious overclocking is that all of these mobos use Foxconn sockets - dodgy pin contact and risk of burning up your shiny new i7.
On the plus side, all of the new Gigabyte P55A boards use Lotes sockets. DFI are also going Lotes exclusively, and EVGA have said they'll replace anything that burns up. On the other hand, Asus have said socket burn is excluded under their warranty (and deny condoning overclocking). MSI boards are actually built by Foxconn, so no luck their either.
Bone to pick
What is it with every tech review site and their failure to include warranty data? Before I purchase anything, I want to see what faith the manufacturer places in its product. On that note, perhaps you would include a review of an EVGA board next time? (10 year warranty: putting their money where their mouths are)
ASUS seems to limp on chipset cooling
That Asus chipset cooler seems pretty marginal, which fits in with my experience. The last couple MBs had huge northbridge heatsinks and tiny southbridge ones, so the southbridge was like grabbing a lit lightbulb, where the northbridge & CPU were fine. I had to buy my own southbridge cooler.
I'll take the huge ugly heatpipe setups for 100, Bob!
RE: Cooling
Hi Leo
As if watercooling ever had anything to do with merit over expense/complication :-) Generally speaking it's put on there for bragging rights, a strive for absolute silence, overclocking beyond sane levels and a case of more money than sense!
When you're doing it properly, there can be no fans involved at all - external radiators (Zalman Reserator series), full heatsinks for CPU & GPU, so no residual airflow from graphics cards either.
Just waiting for this nutter's idea to become standardised - watercooled PSUs:
http://www.overclock.net/other-hardware-mods/59036-water-cooled-psu.html
Insurance claim just waiting to happen!
Intel DP55KG Bluetooth
I didn't mention Bluetooth on the Intel board for a nmber of reasons.
1) The word count on each review is very tight so I stuck to what I considered to be the highlights and I am baffled by the appeal of a wireless technology on a desktop PC. For the record the DP55KG also has infra-red.
2) The antenna for the Bluetooth radio is a horrid fiddly thing that clips into place and then attaches inside your PC case using double sided tape.
3) There are no dedicated Intel drivers for the Bluetooth and you rely on Microsoft for the installation. In my opinion this is never ideal.
4) The Bluetooth doesn't appear to work. Or at least my phone cannot see it which boils down to the same thing. as there is no software on the PC and no way to configure the device. The drivers simply say 'Bluetooth' so I have no idea whether it is working but not broadcasting publicly or broken or what. As the drivers are Microsoft I shall wait for Rev. 3 and see if it bursts into life.
