ASUS Maximus II Formula (Intel P45)
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Date: 26.09.2008 |
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ASUS Maximus II Formula: Board Layout and Features
There are no complaints about the board's design: there is no blocking of DIMM slots latches by the PCI Express video card, with the power connectors positioned conveniently over the board's edges: 24-pin - on the bottom edge, with a 8-pin on the right-hand.
Note that the board has retained a backward compatibility to the "old" PSUs and allows using them with 20+4 cables. At the same time, the unused pins of the additional connector are closed with a plastic lid:
Near the CPU socket, there is a 4-pin CPU_FAN connector for a matching cooler.
Besides it, there are seven (!) more 3-pin connectors: CHA_FAN3 - near the rear panel, OPT_FAN1 and OPT_FAN3 - near the north bridge, CHA_FAN1 and PWR_FAN - near the DIMM slots, CHA_FAN2 - near the south bridge, OPT_FAN2 - on the board's left-hand edge.
On the north bridge, there is a massive radiator connected to the radiator on the power supply module with a heat pipe. Also, using the heat pipe the heat from the south bridge is transferred to the north bridge.
Moreover, the cooling efficiency can be improved through installation of an additional turbine fan which is available in the package bundle.
In case of modification of the cooling system, all the operations must be performed thoroughly and neatly. The thing is that the north bridge of P45 don't have a metal heat spreader (like that on X38/X48) and in fact the radiator adjoins the open core. However, that should not scare away the experienced specialists who remember how to work with open cores of AMD SocketA processors.
Under the north bridge, there are four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules. They are partitioned into two groups with two slots in each. The first two slots refer to the first controller channel, with the other two to the second controller.
The board supports DDR2-667/800/1066/1200 memory, and the maximum memory capacity makes 8 GB. Once voltage is applied to the board, illumination of Power and Reset buttons installed on the left-hand edge of the board lights up.
There are two PCI Express x16 slots onboard (both with latches) which are meant for video cards.
Due to the capabilities of the P45 chipset, 8 lanes of the PCI Express v2.0 bus are allocated to both the slots. Apart from the listed slots, ASUS Maximus II Formula uses two more "regular" PCI slots, as well as three PCI Express x1 slots. The black PCI Express x1 slot is meant for installation of an audio board from the package bundle.
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