System Builder Marathon: Day Three

Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme

Asus Striker Extreme

The Asus Striker Extreme offers more enthusiast-targeted features than nearly any other motherboard. It features power, system reset, and BIOS reset buttons on the inside, plus a kill switch and LCD system status display on the rear panel.

Asus Striker Extreme rear I/O panel and kill switch

The Striker Extreme was also the highest-overclocking motherboard of our 680i comparisons Part 1 and Part 2. We're building this system with enough power and cooling to allow any future overclocking we might desire!

There may be higher-clocking chipsets on the market, but the 680i's claim to fame is its remarkable 46 PCI Express pathways. These permit SLI mode with two graphics cards each getting their full sixteen pathways, a third graphics card with eight pathways, and six leftover links going to onboard devices and x1 slots. These motherboards have a lock on "Ultimate SLI Performance", and our choice of the Striker Extreme was made easy by its overclocking ability and features.