Moving next to the area around the memory slots we see four things of interest.  First we have four DDR2 slots color coded for dual-channel operation.  Next is the 24 pin ATX connector, which still accepts 20-pin power supplies (which is good as its all I have).  Right beside it is Asus eZ-plug which is a standard four pin power connector to provide that little bit more power the motherboard might need.  Lastly there is the floppy header which still sticks around.  Now moving up to the CPU socket area we see that Asus has managed to keep it fairly clean, as installing my Swiftech water cooler wasn't a problem.  One interesting thing we note is a single SATA header, which is actually right beside the external connector on the backplate.  Of note is the heatsink on the voltage regulators above the CPU socket.  Lets look at the controllers for all that the motherboard has on it.

    First lets take a look at the two Intel controllers on this motherboard.  The MCH is the 945P with the SL spec of SL8FV, and made last year.  This controls the communication to the memory and CPU as well as the PCIe slots and the ICH.  The ICH is has a model number of 82801GR, and a SL spec of SL8FY, this marks it as a ICH7R chipset.  This chipset controls the IDE controllers, USB, IEEE1394, PCI bus, and most other lower bandwidth controllers.

    Now lets look at the Gigabit network controller and the onboard sound card.  The network card is a Marvell 88E8053 controller, which is a gigabit network controller that uses the PCIe bus.  Unfortunately Marvell hasn't put any specifications on their website..  The sound card is the Realtek ALC882M CODEC.  This is one of the standard HD CODEC's, and by specifications it is a very high end system.  It has the ability to provide 7.1 sound and a 2 channel stereo at the same time. 
 

    Next is the two 'other' IDE controllers.  First the Silicon Image SI3132 controller is a SATA controller which provides, in this case, two SATA ports, one of which Asus put as an external one.  This is supported by this controller as well as the fact that it is a SATA II controller.  The ITE IT8211F is an dual channel IDE controller which allows for up to four IDE devices to be attached to it, much like the older controllers, before SATA only controllers started taking over.

    First we'll take a quick look at the two main BIOS screens.  First is the initial BIOS screen which gives you the setup for the hard drives, date/time, and floppy configuration.  All in all you're standard BIOS screen.  Moving to the advanced menu we see nothing to modify, rather it just shows us its submenus which is where most of the time in the BIOS is going to take place.

    The JumperFree Configuration menu is where most overclocking efforts will take place.  If you don't want to take the time to play with overclocking you can set the AI Overclocking option for one of multiple speed increases.  However if you plan on overclocking, more than likely you will want to play with all the settings to attain the best overclock you can.  With this you can adjust the CPU, RAM, PCIe bus, and PCI clock speeds, though generally the last two will want to be set at 100MHz and 33MHz respectively.  There is also five different voltage options, with voltages for most things, from the familiar memory and CPU, to the more exotic FSB, the MCH and the ICH voltages.  The LAN cable menu is an integration of the Marvell Windows diagnostic into the BIOS, an interesting addition.

    The USB Configuration menu lets you change the few different USB device options there are from disabling the USB ports to changing to 1.1 support instead of 2.0.  The next menu also doesn't contain much in the way of options to change, except for the ability to enable the built in thermal throttling controls in the newer PIV processors.  There is also the standard option for enabling Hyperthreading in this screen, which was done in all our tests.

    Lastly we will look at the Onboard devices menu and the Hardware monitor screen.  The Onboard devices menu offers control over the rest of the integrated onboard devices.  This includes the audio controller, the IEEE1394 controller, the gigabit NIC, and both non-Intel hard drive controllers.  The Hardware monitor screen gives you some idea of how your system is doing, and allows you to change a few settings, most notably turning on AI Quiet, which would give the system control over the fan speed.