![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, September 09, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe Motherboard Review
When Intel launches a new processor ASUS is among the first companies with products ready to go that will support it. Among the first boards based on the Intel's new LGA1156 socket is the ASUS P7P55D Deluxe. This is a feature rich design based on the Intel P55 Express chipset, supporting Intel's new LGA 1156 Core i5 and Core i7 processors.
Introduction
ASUS is easily one of, it not the most recognized of all motherboard manufacturers on the entire planet. This is certainly for good reason. ASUS builds more motherboards for OEM's than any other board maker. Yet it isn't really what it is known for. It is best known for the boards its created for the computer hardware enthusiast market that has made the ASUS brand name so recognizable. Its boards are certainly well known to the enthusiast. Indeed at virtually every price point imaginable ASUS has got at least a model or two for every processor currently on the market.
The ASUS P7P55D Deluxe is among the first boards to be designed for Intel's new LGA 1156 Core i5 and Core i7 processors. This means a new chipset as well as a new socket. The P7P55D Deluxe integrates the Intel P55 Express chipset which is Intel's first unified chipset. No longer is there a north and south bridge each with their own functions. Everything has either been added to the processor or consolidated into a single chip which is now located where the south bridge would normally be placed on most motherboards. In addition Intel designed a new socket for its Lynnfield processors. It is a Land Grid Array socket with 1156 pins. Currently the processors available for this socket are the Core i5-750, Core i7-860, and Core i7-870 processor which are Nehalem quad core processors. The P7P55D Deluxe supports dual channel DDR3 memory. The board contains a ton of other features as well. It features 10-channel audio, 14 USB ports, IEEE1394a ports, 9 SATA ports, dual LAN ports, etc.
On a technical level the P7P55D Deluxe supports 16+3 phase power for the CPU. It features all solid state capacitors and uses ferrite chokes. It also features something called Turbo EVO which in simple terms is an overclocking processor designed to overclock automatically for you. This isn't the minimalistic auto-overclock of days past. This is supposedly capable of overclocking to a fairly significant degree. The Turbo EVO feature also comes with a remote. If manual overclocking is your thing then it can come in handy. It has a power switch as well as three turbo keys for presets. It also has a + and - key for adjusting the system's bus while inside an application. Finally it controls the boards EPU settings. You can turn your system off or on with this device. Unfortunately it does require a wire and thus it is of little use unless you run the cable outside of your case. In a fully assembled system it would be problematic to connect and disconnect when it isn't needed due to the headers location. Much like wired VCR and TV remotes, the wire is a pain and should go away. (Hopefully we'll see that one of these days.) In any case the board's feature list goes on and on.
A new feature for this board is the ASUS T Probe. In simple terms it is a processor which monitors the power phases and their temperatures. It load balances power between each of the phases to keep their temperatures down and enhance efficiency. Another new addition is ASUS's Memory OK feature. Supposedly this allows you to boot the system up with virtually any memory. It uses failsafe memory profiles in order to allow the system to boot. Another feature that was included was some overvoltage dip switches on the far side of the memory slots toward the board's outer edge. These allow for voltage ranges well beyond what the BIOS normally provides. Just a word of caution, the ranges on these according to the manual are pretty broad and chances are, if you don't know what you are doing you could fry something. On the upside, this gives those seriously hardcore overclockers what they might need to hit even higher speeds that might ordinarily require voltage mods.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
While the board is certainly as feature packed as almost any board I've ever seen. Though the packaging is somewhat retro as it is virtually the same packaging we've been seeing on motherboards for the last several years. This is a stark contrast to the exceptionally nice packaging of the ROG branded boards ASUS also makes. The board arrived safely in its packaging with the usual layer of foam, anti-static bad and cardboard protector. Included are IDE cables, SATA cables, manual, driver DVD, I/O shield, USB/IEEE1394a bracket and a quick connector for the front panel / case switches.
Board Layout
The board layout is really actually among the best of the modern motherboards I've seen. This is of course something ASUS generally excels at with a few exceptions. The layout of this particular board is nothing short of excellent. When it comes to motherboard layouts I'm about as opinionated as a person can get. My first thought when I saw this board was that the memory slots were too close to the first PCI-Express slot. If you look though, there are no manual locking tabs on that side of the DIMM slots. So that's not really an issue. Really that was the only "bad" thing that caught my attention and after really looking at it it wasn't even an issue at all. The board features all polymer solid-electrolyte capacitors and PCB version 1.06G was used for testing.
The CPU area is clean. Of course the LGA1156 socket is smaller than the LGA1366 socket so that helps. The 16+3 power phases are there of course, but they don't intrude on the CPU cooling. The MOSFETs are cooled with very modest heat sinks in terms of size and coverage area. It was actually somewhat surprising to not find tons of heat pipes running all over the board. Though the X58's were fairly clean compared to the X48 and P45 chipsets, the P55 lends itself to an even cleaner setup. Users of large cooling solutions like the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme should have no trouble with the P7P55D Deluxe.
The P7P55D Deluxe has four DDR3 DIMM slots. The maximum supported memory for this board is 16GB of RAM. It features dual channel capability and is capable of speeds upwards of 2000MHz DDR3 with overclocking. The DIMM slots are properly color coded to identify each channel. As I mentioned before the P7P55D Deluxe uses an unusual type of retention mechanism for the DIMMs. You insert the DIMM at an angle and rock it into place. There is only a locking tab on one side of the slot. It takes some getting used to but it's an easy setup that eliminates the clearance issues ASUS would have had here with the DIMM slots so close to the expansion slots.
As a departure from previous chipset designs, Intel has gone to a "unified" chipset. No longer is there a separate north and south bridge. The "north bridge" is actually located where the south bridge is normally located. As you can see in the picture all it takes to cool it is a basic and flat heat sink. This allows for more efficient use of space and reduced chipset production costs. This should allow for cheaper boards in this class. They'll certainly be less expensive than Intel X58 chipset based boards are anyway. At least when comparing apples to apples feature wise. In front of the chipset you'll see six right angled SATA connectors. When I first saw this I was thinking to myself "wow ASUS, all this time and you STILL don't use locking SATA ports?" Well though these lack the holes normally seen in the locking ports, these do in fact support locking SATA cables. They click just as they should and hold in place nicely. Just to the left of our southern located north bridge are three more SATA ports.
This board is interesting in that it actually has three drive controllers. The P55 chipset which integrates something which seems similar to the ICH10R, though it supports 14 USB ports instead of 12. Also present are the JMicron 322 and 363 controllers. The latter is the usual suspect we see on a ton of boards. It actually has one SATA port attached to it so it doesn't do RAID in this implementation. It does however provide ATA-133 support. The JMB363 also supports floppy drives but there is no floppy port integrated into this board as you can see from the photos. The JMB322 is more interesting as this is part of their Drive Xpert feature. It is touted in the documentation as being a true hardware solution. It is only capable of AHCI/RAID-0 or RAID-1 operation. It does not support JBOD or RAID-5 like the ICHxxR series south bridges do, or the Intel P55 Express chipset does. The SATA ports marked SATA_E1 and SATA_E2 are attached to the JMicron JMB322 controller. The black port is attached to the JMB363.
The PCI-Express slot configuration is nearly ideal though you may notice that the three PCI-Express slots are placed somewhat oddly in relationship to one another. There is ample room between the first two, but more than usual. Normally they only have one slot between them which gets blocked. In this case you block one PCI-Express x1 slot, and you still have one left open. The last two PCI-Express x16 slots are placed the normal distance apart with a legacy PCI slot in between them. At the very bottom edge of the board there is one remaining legacy PCI slot. The board does not boast 3-Way SLI support, so that is really a non-issue, but the first two slots are very much ideally placed from each other leaving room in between two video cards.
The I/O panel has the legacy PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, a whopping 8 USB ports, optical, SPDIF, dual RJ-45 ports, one IEEE1394 port and of course six mini-audio jacks. It also features a clear CMOS button.
TurboV EVO
Included with the ASUS P7P55D Deluxe is the ASUS TurboV EVO application. This version of the utility is slightly more complex than the older TurboV application we started seeing with ASUS X58 motherboards a while back. The software itself is actually fairly nice. It has a clean look to it and is simple to use and understand. In its basic mode all the utility really allows you to do is adjust the BCLK. Which I found only got me to 166MHz before locking the system up. In the BIOS using only the BCLK adjustment I was able to go quite a bit further, though I'll touch on that in the overclocking section. In its advanced mode all the settings you normally need to do the basic overclocking are all represented here. CPU PLL and PCH voltages, BCLK Frequency, CPU, IMC and DRAM Bus Voltages can all be found here.
This version of TurboV is also designed to work with the Turbo V remote. The remote itself is of course fairly simple. It features three preset keys which can be configured here to use a specific preset. The defaults are pictured above. The remote also has a BCLK adjustment key and controls for EPU mode. Toggle it on or off for OC'ing. This utility also features the Auto Tuning function. I didn't have much time to spend working with this particular feature. Frankly I just didn't have much luck with it. I found that the utility took several minutes to test each setting and much of the time the system would fail to post. I did see it hit about 3.33GHz or so then drop down to 2.8GHz and then I'd get nothing but a blank screen. Most of the time I sat there looking at a blank screen for 10 minutes at a time or more. I just couldn't make this feature work at all so I gave up on it.