ASUS P8P67 Deluxe - Initial Thoughts

[aardwolf]

I'm just getting ready to try out my ASUS p8p67 deluxe mobo with a brandy new 2600K processor (yes, I read the news, yes I will be avoiding the 3GBps ports, and yes, I will be exchanging it in April or whenever0.

Thought I'd share some initial unboxing thoughts:

1. Board arrived well packed and nicely boxed; it's a two-layer box with the board up top with a velcro window, and a sub-layer with the cables, etc. 4x SATA cables were nice.

2. The board slightly curls up at the left and right sides (looking at it from the perspective of the rear connectors). I'm hoping when I case this that the posts will even it out somewhat.

3. The "Dual Intelligent Processors" sink has a plastic covering on it -- curious if this is intentional to shield conductivity from a card in the first pciex16 slot.

4. The ram slot design is just silly. There's a clip on one side but not the other? I'm looking closely at this and am still not entirely certain I've seated the RAM properly.

5. Probably most bizarre are the LAN ports on the back. There's a Realtek LAN port, and an Intel LAN port (the instruction manual states this is the one that's "Recommended for single LAN usage", but there's a sticker covering the port that says "Try it"). Why you'd cover up the one you're supposed to use is beyond me.

6. I will be loving the digital 2-digit display for error handling.

 

[rolli59]

Let us have your thoughts when it is up and running!

 

[apache_lives]

noob.

1 > like any other motherboard
2 > during testing or installing any intel 775 or later motherboard they ALL will do that
3 > whats wrong with stickers and logos?
4 > there designed so you can have the ram slots close to the video card and still insert/remove the ram easily - issues? READ THE MANUAL - THIS IS NOW A STANDARD ASUS THING
5 > Intel NIC's are the best of the desktop standard nic's there just telling you to try it?
6 > error handling and those silly error codes are bs for a true tech - if the board has 3 issues what will it report? if the video card detects as fine but doesnt actually work (common nvidia thing) it wont see anything

 

[aardwolf]

Some of this is exactly like any other mobo, yes. Just giving first impressions. If you're numb to some of this from having worked with a greater number of boards, great.

As far as the stickers/logos, it was neither -- plastic scratch covering over top the logo, like you get on glossy faceplates. I'm used to this on other components; not on heat sinks.

Thanks for the explanation on the memory insertion reason. I had read the manual thoroughly, thanks, but as far as memory insertion, it was limited to 4 pictures; no info blurb on that.

I agree on the Intel NICs; I was just thinking that when there's two NICs, one covered by a sticker, a consumer is more likely to use the one that's NOT covered.

As far as the error codes, if a board has 3 issues, it will report the first error during the boot process. For example, the BIOS (UEFI really) hung on me during startup after about the 4th or 5th time up, and it turned out that my KVM was preventing the mobo from finding my kb/mouse. It's not a substitute for good troubleshooting skills, but it's one more tool in the box, and it's been more useful than nothing for me. I prefer it to the LCD display I had on my formula maximus.

 

[aardwolf]

Some other thoughts:

When setting up the boot order, the two SATA controllers can conflict as far as visible boot devices for selection via the GUI UEFI BIOS replacement. Advanced mode allows you to a) pick which SATA devices appear on the boot order selection, and b) allow you to pick from either controller as the primary boot device, but these are not reflected in the simplistic GUI.

I have a feeling most people will just laugh at the fancy UEFI after the first couple boots -- it's shiny, yes, but not very useful.

I haven't yet tried the overclocking tools; I'm planning to read up quite a bit more on them.

Windows 7 doesn't support anything out of the box. USB3, SATA controllers, RAID, Audio, LAN, etc. all require the packaged drivers. No surprise here, except that the LAN couldn't use a generic Intel driver.

Establishing a LAN connection (DHCP) seems to take longer than usual, however this may just be a symptom of windows booting faster off of the SSD.

 

[ortoklaz]

Some other thoughts;