Joe’s Journal

By Joseph Eulo

With support for dual-core CPUs and the latest graphics, motherboards are packing more muscle than ever before. One such monster for the Intel Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, and the Pentium EE is the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe Motherboard (see figure 1). It features NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI x16 chipset, in an ATX form factor that supports up to 8 gigabytes (8GB) of DDR2 800/667/533 non-ECC memory and a blazing fast 1066MHz front side bus. The P5N32-SLI SE offers more than enough expandability options with its 7 internal PCI expansions slots (2 x PCI Express x16, 1 x PCI Express x14, 2 x PCI Express x1, 2x PCI). The back panel of the P5N32-SLI SE sports a plethora of external ports: 1 x Parallel port, 1 x S/PDIF Out (Coaxial + Optical), your typical PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse ports, and 1 x External SATA, 2 x RJ45, an 8-Channel Audio I/O, and 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports. the P5N32 also has two Ultra DMA 133/100/66/33, and four Serial ATA 3 Gb/s controllers and supports NVRAID: RAID0, 1, 0+1, 5, and JBOD on Serial ATA drives (”P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe”).

The P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe features NVIDIA’s SLI technology which takes advantage of the increased bandwidth of the PCI Express bus and features intelligent hardware and software that allows two Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) to efficiently work together to deliver mind blowing graphics and performance. NVIDIA’s SLI technology offers twice the PCI Express bandwidth of the X8 SLI solutions making use of the two full-bandwidth 16-lane PCI Express links (”P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe”). ASUS’s 8-Phase Power Design builds a more steady power supply environment for the CPU and generates less heat than conventional power design. Moreover, with this strong power pump, the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe can perform better when over clocking the processors.

The ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe motherboard supports the next-generation hard drives based on the Serial ATA (SATA) 3Gb/s storage specs, delivering improved scalability and doubling the bus bandwidth for high-speed data retrieval disk writes. As a plus the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe offers an external SATA port on back input output panel that is designed for external SATA devices; is hot-swappable compliant and supports up to 16 devices with port-multiplier functions (”P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe”).

The P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe features “Stack Cool 2″ technology, which is a fan-less and zero-noise cooling solution. It effectively transfers heat generated by the critical components to the other side of the specially designed PCB (printed circuit board) for effective heat dissipation. The fan less design provides a cool environment without all the typical problems associated with fan less solutions. Cooling fans, over time, become noisy as the ball bearings wear out. The ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe can be purchased at ZipZoomFly, http://www.ZipZoomFly.com, for about $209.99 to $214.99. If you are a serious PC, gamer or power user the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe motherboard is for you.