ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition Motherboard, Reviewed
ASUS offers another option for enthusiasts and mainstream users with an eye on the Core i7 processors, the ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition Motherboard. The board itself is built around the Intel X58 Northbridge Chipset and marketed as a fully equipped motherboard supporting: Intel LGA1366 Core i7 processors, DDR3 memory operating in Triple Channel memory mode up to 1333MHz, and either Nvidia SLI and ATI CrossFireX graphics mode using matched graphic accelerators.
The ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition Motherboard is well laid out, you can tell a lot of thought and planning went into the design. The P6T Deluxe board comes with six DDR3 DIMM slots organized in to a series of three colored pairs. The board is equipped with three PCI-Express x16 slots, one PCI-Express x4 slot, and two PCI slots (x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8). The first two slots will run at x16 speed. If you choose to set the second slot to x8 speed, the third slot can also run at x8 speed – which means you can use two graphics cards. Nothing limited by using two cards of course.
LGA1366 socket
Memory support on the board is up to 1333MHz DDR3 memory. Although memory speed can be set to 1600 MHz if overclocked. The P6T Deluxe supports up to six physical DIMM slots, with the slots organized in to a series of 3 colored pairs. Triple Channel memory mode is achieved by placing like DIMMs modules in to similar colored slots across the sets. You can install up to 24GB of memory on the ASUS board. The board supports Intel’s Extreme Memory Profile (XMP), which is their version of SLI-Ready memory.
Moving on to the ports and connectors on the I/O panel, ASUS has a nice layout and well thought out design here as well. Starting with the single PS/2 port, it’s a dual purpose port that can be used for either a mouse or keyboard. If you have both PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you’re out of luck, you will need to get a USB mouse or keyboard. There are eight USB 2.0 ports, a collection of audio connectors, a six-pin Firewire, one eSATA and dual Gigabit LAN. Plug in the bracket that comes in the box and you can gain two additional USB ports and a mini four-pin Firewire.
The I/O Panel
ASUS included a device which they call the OC Palm – a small 2.5 inch LCD monitor that plugs into the motherboard through any available USB port to display overclocking options and vital system information. The OC Palm gives you the ability to manually control board voltage, CPU temperature, fan speeds, speed setting of the BCLK bus and so on. Once you have Windows installed and running, you will have to installed the Asus EPU-6 Engine utility software and the Asus TurboV utility driver for the OC Palm device. Then you will be able to use the OC Palm to monitor your PC’s system performance and make changes as needed.
The Wind-Flow Design
ASUS uses a modified version of the American Megatrends AMIBIOS. The menu categories are: Main, Ai Tweaker, Advanced, Power, Boot, Tools, and Exit. The main menu is where you would set-up storage configuration, date and time, set drives in Raid mode and so on. The Advanced Menu is where you configure the CPU options and various integrated devices. Magority of the systems performance settings are conducted in the A.I. Tweaker section of the BIOS.
Overall, the ASUS’s P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition is the perfect example of what a new motherboard chipset should emulate. Every bell and whistle that exists on ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard has the performance, features and reliability that ASUS has been known for. This is a great board but it’s not cheap, the board itself will cost about $300.00 US Dollars. That’s a nice chunk of change for a motherboard. Then you need memory which is roughly about $100 US Dollars per DIMM, you will want three of these. The cooler is about $62.00 US Dollars. Anyway you get the point, all this adds up. If you don’t mind spending some money on a top-notch system then this board may be for you.
