Asus P4C800 Deluxe: Minimalist Top Candidate
Board revision 1.03, BIOS 1007 Beta 002
Packaging of the Asus P4C800.
Asus P4C800 in the classic 90s design.
Single splash of color: Blue RAM slots.
Asus was the only board in the test field in the yellow board design (PCB) of the late 90s, if you ignore the colored RAM slots. Rather than using Intel's CSA protocol, the manufacturer has integrated a reasonably priced GBit LAN chip from 3COM-Chip (3C940 PCI), which communicates with the slow Southbridge (PCI). This is done with the sole intention of saving costs, which fans of the brand cannot understand. After all, the board costs around 280 euros, so it should still have CSA GBit LAN.
Asus also omits the RAID controller in the Southbridge, and uses a Promise PDC20378 instead, which offers both IDE-RAID and Serial-ATA RAID. On the one hand, this saves costs of around three dollars (in quantities of 1000); on the other hand, the external chip is considerably slower than the integrated Intel ICH5 controller. Details are provided in our Storage Guide.
Perfectly adequate: Northbridge with passive cooling.