DailyTech - ASUS Prepares X38 Express Motherboard

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Hardware ASUS Prepares X38 Express Motherboard
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - August 20, 2007 8:21 AM

48 comment(s) - last by oscar3d.. on Aug 21 at 6:44 PM

ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Source: DailyTech)

New P5E3 Deluxe to ship early next month

ASUS is finalizing its X38 Express based motherboard for shipping early next month. The upcoming P5E3 Deluxe supports all LGA775 socket processors, including the upcoming Penryns. The board only accepts DDR3 memory.

ASUS opted to implement two PCIe x16 slots for ATI CrossFire multi-GPU support. Unlike some other X38 Express based boards with three PCIe x16 slots, the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe is unable to take advantage of three-way or even four-way ATI CrossFire configurations. However, in exchange for less PCIe x16 slots, the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe has three standard PCI slots. The P5E3 Deluxe also has two PCIe x1 slots.

Although Intel removed IDE support from the ICH9R, ASUS opted to equip the P5E3 Deluxe with an Agere controller for a single IDE port. Other notable features of the P5E3 Deluxe include onboard high-definition audio, Gigabit Ethernet and six SATA 3.0 Gbps.

ASUS also employs a heat pipe cooling solution to cool the X38 Express. However, the final design of the heat pipe is undecided.

Expect the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe to show up in retail next month.

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OK no IDE from Intel

By qdemn7 on 8/20/2007 10:27:13 AM , Rating: 2

That's been happening with the last few chipsets. So the mobo manufacturers still install a single IDE port. But why, oh why are they wasting the space on the board for a floppy drive? I would much rather ditch the floppy drive too.

RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By Blaidd on 8/20/2007 10:34:27 AM , Rating: 1

I agree completely, why would they even bother dropping IDE support onto this board, just about all modern OS and BIOS accept flash or CDs now for drivers and updates, two it makes me laugh they offer legacy support for an item that is about as old as PCs are in gerneral but are forcing DDR3 upon its customers which honestly should be completely happy with DDR2 due to the core architecture. There is no need for DDR3 until we see intel CPUs end of 08 or even 09.

Foolish Asus as i think another x38 manufacturer has just gotten my money.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By mlau on 8/21/2007 5:00:39 AM , Rating: 2

Well how else are the legions of toy-os users going to
"Press F6 to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver" ?

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By dcalfine on 8/20/2007 10:38:22 AM , Rating: 3

floppy drives at 25 yeArs old, that's why. I'd understand thenesd for an IDE DVD drive tho

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By East17 on 8/20/2007 11:00:20 AM , Rating: 1

No. Dumping IDE and floppy ports is a stupid idea . I remember Abit had a mobo with no PS2 ports and no floppy connector and the motherboard was unusable . You could not even work with the BIOS when using an entire series of USB keyboards . Windows2000 and Windows98SE were out of the quiestion as the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work during the setup process . The list of compatible keyboards was veeery short . How do you install a RAID controller driver if windowsXP can only search for the driver on floppy disks and not on USB thumb drives ?

How do you load a DOS CD-ROM driver if the JMicron IDE controller is incompatible with most of the drivers ?

One day I was at a friend of mine trying to setup her new PC . I've seen with my own eyes in a Gigabyte manual the suggestion that to install the SATA driver you needed ANOTHER COMPUTER on which you would format the required floppy disk with the driver . How's that even possible ? I buy a new PC BUT , to make it work , I need another PC already installed .

The situation was even much shameful as the new PC HAD NO FLOPPY DRIVE . So even if I would have had another PC to format the floppy driver disk , I wouldn't have no floppy driver where to insert the disk .

If WindowsXP would have had the option to scan during the install section for drivers located on USB drives , dropping the IDE support & floppy support would have been ok . But since there is no such option , Intel and the mobo companies are just cutting costs and making profits on our backs .

Anyway , besides the thinnner cable THERE IS NO SATA ADVANTAGE . And don't start with NCQ as is not working on ANY of the Seagate HDDs (Seagate being the biggest promoter of NCQ) as prooved by XBitLabs in their 500GB roundup . When working with more than one thread , ALL the Seagate HDDs in the test were dropping to a speed of only 0.5 MB/ss . And I'm talking about the new 7200.10 series . But the Maxtor IDE drives were working @ 30 MB/s even with 4 threads . So what's the advantage of NCQ ? None !!! Also , when working with a single thread , ANY HDD IN THE WORLD would give worse results than when NCQ would be disabled .

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By Black69ta on 8/20/2007 11:39:49 AM , Rating: 2

If you need Floppy for RAID why not just format a USB thumbdrive as a floppy and load the drivers with that? Or will Windows not recognize a thumbdrive as a floppy for that?
You could always Slipstream your RAID drivers into your WINDOWS CD

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By East17 on 8/20/2007 1:10:48 PM , Rating: 1

During the setup, the WindowsXP instalation routine won't recognise a USB Drive as a floppy and would not let you load the needed drivers from that USB disk using the F6 Key .

That's just how WinXP is . So the floppy drive is stil needed . It's even essential for the instalation.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By Black69ta on 8/20/2007 1:55:28 PM , Rating: 2

What about Burning a CD to emulate a floppy would that work with XP?

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By elegault on 8/20/2007 2:29:31 PM , Rating: 2

Still need another computer.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By twjr on 8/20/2007 11:01:44 PM , Rating: 2

Having recently spent a couple of days trying to sort a workaround this exact problem the only solution is to slipstream your drivers into the xp install disc. You can't get xp to recognize another cd or usb drive during installation. Involves a great number of shagged cds and a lot of anger at why xp isn't picking up the drivers even though they are in the right place. Still floppy drives are a waste of time as other than this one situation there is no need to have them now.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By Bluestealth on 8/21/2007 3:07:00 AM , Rating: 2

nLite is your friend, you can get it at www.nliteos.com
If you can't get it to work, your either not using the right type of drivers(ones that are designed to be seen by windows setup) or nuhi has accidentally let a bug slip into a release, and you just need to go to sleep and wakeup for the fix.

He also makes vLite to do the same thing with Vista. It also allows you to remove components and tweak your install, if your into that :)

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By gigahertz20 on 8/20/2007 12:33:44 PM , Rating: 2

It's funny you should mention this, I had to go through this last night when I was setting up my new computer with a Gigabyte P35 motherboard.

Before I could install Windows XP I needed to press F6 and install the AHCI SATA drivers. The SATA drivers were on the motherboard driver CD and the manual wanted me to copy them off the CD onto a floppy. Well I HAVE NO FLOPPY DRIVE!!!!!

I probably should have grabbed a USB key and formatted it FAT and then put the AHCI SATA drivers on that but I wasn't sure if Windows XP would recognize that....it only said floppy.

Anyways I managed to borrow a friends floppy drive and hooked it up then installed the correct F6 drivers.

At least now I have Windows XP installed.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By Omega215D on 8/20/2007 5:43:48 PM , Rating: 2

That's odd, I have an MSI K8N Neo4-F and my primary hard drive is a SATA. I did not have to install any SATA drivers when I installed XP. Once setup was done I could install the raid drivers and enable RAID if I wanted to.

I rarely use the floppy to upgrade the BIOS since MSI can update the BIOS through Windows.

The last time I had to use a floppy to install SATA drivers was on my Asus nForce 2 motherboard so I would think that newer boards should be just fine.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By qdemn7 on 8/20/2007 12:42:30 PM , Rating: 2

No dropping IDE isn't a stupid idea. Seagate, the biggest drive manufacturer on earth has briefed the channel on cessation of production of IDE drives.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41...

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By East17 on 8/20/07, Rating: 0

RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By munkle on 8/20/2007 3:57:54 PM , Rating: 2

Less cabling mess, drives are not on the same channel and you can write and read to two drives at the same time without it going so slow. Performance may not have come from sata but there are plenty of other reasons why sata is better than ide.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By FightingChance on 8/20/2007 4:59:07 PM , Rating: 3

It's not a 'hoax' East. It's progress - the parallel connection of PATA is very inefficient. SATA chaining and extensibility are big advantages, not to mention the smaller cables and newer power connectors.

Also, if you have SATA hdd's in AHCI mode, you drop the need for legacy IRQ's 14 and 15 being bound to hdd controllers.

PC's *must* evolve to stay relevant. Unfortunately many innovations are held back because of 'chicken and egg' issues, like the floppy drive can't go away until the BIOS is replaced with UEFI, which isn't supported by Windows XP or 32bit Windows Vista. PS/2 connectors are the same way - BIOS is so old and basic that there is no industry established way to handle USB devices in a pre-OS environment.

Sometimes advances aren't about performance, it's about interoperability and future proofing. A personal computer should enable you to work more efficiently, and that involves setup and maintenance as well - who wants to wrestle with MASTER/SLAVE jumpers and IRQ assignments anyway?

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By East17 on 8/20/2007 8:22:27 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
It's not a 'hoax' East. It's progress - the parallel connection of PATA is very inefficient.

Inefficient or not , the performance is the same sow , as log as they consume the same amount of current , there is NO ADVANTAGE FROM SATA .

quote:
SATA chaining and extensibility are big advantages, not to mention the smaller cables

I've never seen a SATA cable longer than 50cm . I've seen and I'm using 100cm PATA cables . So there is NO ADVANTAGE FROM SATA . Simple cables ... it's a plus but insignificant .

quote:
and newer power connectors.

Since when "newer" becomes an objectively judged advantage !?

quote:
Also, if you have SATA hdd's in AHCI mode, you drop the need for legacy IRQ's 14 and 15 being bound to hdd controllers.

Small tweak . Useful but small .

quote:
PC's *must* evolve to stay relevant. Unfortunately many innovations are held back because of 'chicken and egg' issues, like the floppy drive can't go away until the BIOS is replaced with UEFI, which isn't supported by Windows XP or 32bit Windows Vista. PS/2 connectors are the same way - BIOS is so old and basic that there is no industry established way to handle USB devices in a pre-OS environment.

Sometimes advances aren't about performance, it's about interoperability and future proofing. A personal computer should enable you to work more efficiently, and that involves setup and maintenance as well - who wants to wrestle with MASTER/SLAVE jumpers and IRQ assignments anyway?

Here's an analogy : Intel & AMD always are introducing new steppings of their CPUs with small tweaks on cache , memory controllers , latency , heat output etc. But they've never charged more for a new stepping although THERE WERE PERFOMANCE IMPROVEMENTS from a stepping to another during the same year .

On SATA vs. PATA issue , there were never PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS IN OVER 7 YEARS . But they’ve always charged more for the same HDD with the SATA interface .

I know it's VERY SLOW evolution and that it's normal , but when they charge more for this "VERY SLOW evolution" with NO PERFORMANCE ADVANTAGE by advertising numbers and features that have no correspondent in the REAL WORLD , it means IT'S A HOAX .

There is no consumer HDD that surpasses the 90MB/s transfer rate but SATA 2 advertises 384 MB/s transfer rate as the FUNDAMENTAL FEATURE . Correct but never achieved in the last 7 years .

The NCQ feature was heavily advertised by Seagate but ON THEIR OWN HDDs IT'S NOT WORKING AND IT NEVER WORKED although enabled .

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By FightingChance on 8/21/2007 3:13:04 PM , Rating: 2

I love the SATA power connectors - the old 4 pin Molex power connectors love to get wedged in tight. Sometimes I'd have to use pliers to pull them out!

A quick check of pricing shows SATA and PATA hard drives pretty even with + or - a few bucks depending on model.

Did Seagate kill your parents or something? I have to say I'm pretty satisfied with my SATA Barracuda ES.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By tcsenter on 8/21/2007 2:51:17 PM , Rating: 2

Its not only for hard drives, the majority of CD/DVD writers on the market are IDE/ATAPI. Problems with SATA CD/DVD drives continue to be relatively high compared to IDE/ATAPI, particularly with third-party controllers or PHY chips, or when running SATA in RAID or AHCI modes.

Although most user demand for IDE is related to CD/DVD drives, there are still several dozen million perfectly good IDE hard drives > 100GB in use that are less than three years old.

Seagate won't stop production of IDE hard disks until December or January and will have enough supply in the channel to last three months. This will hardly "cause" Western Digital and Hitachi to follow suit. On the contrary, Western Digital and Hitachi will see an increase in demand for their IDE drives...at least for a while. IDE drives still account for 30% of global hard drive sales, though demand for the interface is much higher owing to CD/DVD and existing drives.

By the time demand for the IDE interface is truly insignificant, the X38 models released next month will have long been phased-out.

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By Anonymous Freak on 8/21/2007 1:27:30 PM , Rating: 2

Abit's "MAX" line of motherboards *DID* Have a floppy port, and their BIOS was fully usable with a USB keyboard. I easily installed XP on it, including the RAID controller, without issue. In the second revision, they put the PS/2 ports back on though, which I considered annoying. I had moved to a USB keyboard and mouse before I bought my MAX board, and had no intention of moving back.

98 and 2k out of the question? Of course, they were old. Just as companies on the cutting edge could exclude XP right now. (Do I hear DirectX 10?) (Although the MAX board did indeed come with drivers to run 98 or 2k.)

In addition, many BIOSes for computers with no floppy drive map a USB floppy *IN THE BIOS* to the standard floppy connection. I had a subnotebook I bought in 1999 that had no internal floppy drive, and USB was the only choice. When I plugged a USB floppy drive in, the BIOS mapped it so that it appeared as a standard floppy drive until the OS had loaded USB drivers. (Same as with USB keyboard and mouse, they are mapped to virtual PS/2 ports until the OS loads USB drivers.)

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RE: OK no IDE from Intel

By sturedrup on 8/20/2007 6:17:53 PM , Rating: 2

I don't think you people even know which chips on a motherboard support what devices.

IDE support is either integrated into the NB/SB or another chip that bridges off the SB.

FLOPPY is a DEFAULT FEATURE found in the winbond chip. This chip contains the PS/2 keyboard port, FLOPPY and bridges the BIOS chip.

So lets put all your BS together, LETS GET RID OF FLOPPY = no basic ps/2 keyboard support and no way to bridge the bios chip to the NB/SB. You complete dumba**es/f**kwits, removing floppy support would make a motherboard useless.

PLUS to add insault to injury, floppy drives are require for BASIC command prompt. I know USB can do 99% of things floppy can but look at that satistic ONLY 99%, what other device is going to do that 1%? floppy way be the most annoying device but at less i'm garanteed a storage device/command support.

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no crossfire?

By dcalfine on 8/20/2007 9:34:53 AM , Rating: 2

Why would anyone want X16 over crossfire?

RE: no crossfire?

By retrospooty on 8/20/2007 9:50:47 AM , Rating: 3

Because 99% of the people that buy PC's don't want, or need 2 video cards. I am a gamer, and would love the performance, but I am not willing to deal with the space issues, heat and price of 2 high end video cards when invariably, 6 months after release, there is one new card released that is as fast or faster than 2 of the previous generation.

For example, I didn't get 7900GTX SLI, I had a single GTX. not long after I got that, the 8800GTX was released and it alone is faster than 2 7900GTX - thats why.

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RE: no crossfire?

By Flunk on 8/20/2007 10:11:31 AM , Rating: 2

Actually, it has 2 16x PCIe slots. He is complaining that it doesn't have 3 or four. I know one person with a dual video card rig (and it's x1950 Pros). The value of having 2 graphics cards is dubious at best because by the time you need the performance a newer card with better features and performance is available at the same or lower price than you paid for the second card.

Why would anyone want to pay for 3 cards? 99.9% of people never bother with 2.

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RE: no crossfire?

By DigitalFreak on 8/20/2007 10:51:25 AM , Rating: 2

99.9% of all statistics are made up...

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RE: no crossfire?

By retrospooty on 8/20/2007 11:01:25 AM , Rating: 2

Thats 100% half way true. :D

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RE: no crossfire?

By Arctucas on 8/20/2007 6:13:42 PM , Rating: 2

In no way should it be misconstrued that I do not disagree.

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RE: no crossfire?

By Seymourbbuts on 8/20/2007 7:03:52 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
They say 3 percent of the people use 5 to 6 percent of their brain
97 percent use 3 percent and the rest goes down the drain
I'll never know which one I am but I'll bet you my last dime
99 percent think we're 3 percent 100 percent of the time

64 percent of all the world's statistics are made up right there on the spot
82.4 percent of people believe 'em whether they're accurate statistics or not
I don't know what you believe but I do know there's no doubt
I need another double shot of something 90 proof
I got too much to think about

Todd Snider's view.

I'll bet Flunk believes he is a member of the 3%.

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RE: no crossfire?

By MightyAA on 8/20/2007 11:18:24 AM , Rating: 2

If I remember right, that's the advantage of Crossfire. The cards could be mix & match. They don't have to be identical like SLi solutions.

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RE: no crossfire?

By Assimilator87 on 8/20/2007 1:20:08 PM , Rating: 2

If you mix and match, the faster card is limited to the speed of the slower card. For example, if you had a 2400 Pro and a 2900 XT in Crossfire, it would be as fast as two 2400 Pros.

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RE: no crossfire?

By Omega215D on 8/20/2007 9:42:26 PM , Rating: 2

Isn't it also possible that one PCIe GPU is used for video and the other would be able to handle physics? So dual PCIe 16 / 8 slots aren't just for SLI or Crossfire but also having a physics processor as well.

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Hmm...

By UBB on 8/20/2007 9:35:14 AM , Rating: 2

Supporting DDR3 only; this will be expensive for those wanting 2GB or more, especially the higher speed kits. Cheapest, lowest speed 2 x 1GB kit starts at around $350.

RE: Hmm...

By GhandiInstinct on 8/20/2007 10:28:35 AM , Rating: 2

Ya, I don't like them shoving DDR3 down our threats at its infancy with high latencies.

DDR2 is still getting lower latencies as it hasn't hit it's potential yet and the price is falling.

Shame on Intel for being greedy.

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RE: Hmm...

By System48 on 8/20/2007 10:38:31 AM , Rating: 2

It's not actually Intel, the 3 series chipset supports DDR2&3 it's up to the mobo manufacturers to choose. There's one board I saw posted a few days ago that will have 4 slots DDR3 and 2 slots DDR2, not by Asus, may have been MSI. Even Intel's next chipset series, Eaglelake, will support DDR2&3.

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RE: Hmm...

By GhandiInstinct on 8/20/2007 12:07:12 PM , Rating: 2

Then it makes great sense to pick up a dual memory motherboard, excluding the potential that it may be slower than full DDR3 only motherboards in the future.

But it makes a great transition to PCI-E 2.0 and kind of future proof as long as the boards support Penryn.

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RE: Hmm...

By jedisoulfly on 8/20/2007 12:22:06 PM , Rating: 2

x38 only officially supports DDR3. some motherboard manufactures will opt to make boards with DDR2 but it will not be supported by intel. the only manufacture I have read of so far thats making a DDR2 board is DFI. pretty sure I read that here on DT

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RE: Hmm...

By System48 on 8/20/2007 1:17:37 PM , Rating: 2

It was an MSI I had seen.
http://www.techpowerup.com/img/07-08-19/msix38.jpg

Even if it's not officially supported, the x38 still supports DDR2 and it's up to the manufacturers to decided how best to serve their customers. Personally I like the combo DDR2&3 option like MSI has.

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RE: Hmm...

By jedisoulfly on 8/20/2007 8:36:25 PM , Rating: 2

getting DDR2 to work on a x38 board does not mean that it is supported.. offcially or not. yes there will be gross use of the phrase " supports DDR2" but I think a more accurate phrase would be "works with" .....just my opinion

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I'll wait...

By TheRequiem on 8/20/2007 2:39:50 PM , Rating: 2

I'm going to wait for Nvidia's next chipset iteration. I am a gamer, and I think the X38 from Intel is a "weak" gaming motherboard. The Nvidia chipset will be much better oriented to gamers, maybe will be faster and support SLI with no problems. I'll wait.

RE: I'll wait...

By Arctucas on 8/20/2007 6:16:41 PM , Rating: 2

Heh, nVidia can't even get the current (680) chipset right.

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RE: I'll wait...

By Willie on 8/20/2007 8:34:11 PM , Rating: 2

And you know all this because of the extensive benchmarks out there for the X38, right?

Oh wait, there aren't ANY benchmarks of an X38 chipset motherboard, so what you "think" the X38 is or isn't makes as much difference to the world as the cost of buffalo chips do to Eskimos.

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RAM slots

By Devo2007 on 8/20/2007 9:15:44 AM , Rating: 2

Hmm, the position of the RAM slots seems to indicate that you might need to remove the video card in order to remove a memory module -- I thought manufacturers had resolved this issue.

RE: RAM slots

By Moishe on 8/20/2007 9:23:39 AM , Rating: 2

looks like it could be just close enough... but it's almost always tight. Frankly, there isn't a lot of places they could put the ram to solve that problem.

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Cooling

By System48 on 8/20/2007 10:31:47 AM , Rating: 2

I love the jury-rigged heatsink they're using, looks like it came right of the P5K Premium. Anyone have guesses on pricing?

RE: Cooling

By Anh Huynh on 8/20/2007 11:18:33 AM , Rating: 2

I'm figuring north of $200, considering the prices of the P35 Express boards.

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no sense to me

By DeepBlue1975 on 8/21/2007 8:49:51 AM , Rating: 2

When I read the x38 chipset will only sport DDR3, I got decided to buy a p35 one. DDR3 isn't justifiable just yet, I think it needs two years more to get fair prices and start giving a noticeable improvement in performance.

I've got a P5K ddr2 mobo recently and that it only has one IDE connector made things a bit complicated for me, as I've got 1 IDE HDD and 2 optical ide drives.
Only one optical drive is somewhat inconvenient for me and now I'll have to ditch that one and start searching for a SATA one...
I'm not very happy with having to replace a perfectly functional device that is far from its life cycle and the newest available equivalent device doesn't offer me any advantage at all. But well... the p5k dlx is turning out to be a great motherboard and I guess I can forgive it this "little" fault.

ASUS X38 HAS THE POOREST DESIGN PERIOD!!

By oscar3d on 8/21/2007 6:44:59 PM , Rating: 2

Link to my post with pictures and diagrams.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33899...

From that post...
"....
a) Location of the first PCI-E v/s Memory Modules

As you can see in the picture, the memory stck handlers are directly on a straight 90 degree collission with the video card. (I've created a red rectangle to picture where the videocard will be located, and these rectangles is an approx of a high-en board like the 8800GTX or HD2900XT)

So, if I want to take out my memory sticks, I will FIRST have to remove the video card. Which is a real hassle!!!

What if you want to run memtest on each stick, can you imagine? Taking out
videocard, then replacing one stick, then video card back, and test.. and again...

This is my first critic to the board.

b) The location of the PCI express is garbage.

Instad of having it on the First or Second PCI Bracket, you will have it on the third.

Asus thinks it's more important to have two PCI-1 plugs on the top?
Like we really going to make use of them?

Instead we pull all the video cards lower, thus shrinking the cooling space between them.

This is even worse on SLI, the second card at the bottom will be almost touching the bottom of your desktop case.

Which leads to...

c) Adding a third party coooling solution on SLI is UNTHINKABLE, just by looking at the diagram, except if you use a shrud with a blower.

d) Asus thinks PCI is important to keep. And I applaud that, because no Soundcard manufacturer will build PCI-Express soundcards. So we have 3 PCI
plugs for us in this board.

But on Crossfire (or SLI), I wonder where can I fit my Soundblaster X-Fi card?

In between the two VGA cards? Please look at the space in the diagram.

This is important because as a high-end consumer, I really don't want to run onboard sound, thus eating CPU cycles on my system.

e) Since this board uses ICH9, IDE support is throuwn away, courtesy of INTEL. And Asus gladly thought of the people who still has ULTRA DMA DVD drives. So they put an AGERE IDE adapter, in red at the bottom of the board.

Oh, my god, what an excellent location... NOT!!

I can imagine rotuing the ribbon cable down there, and I think I will need a very long one.

Running now in Crossfire (or SLI) see the picture, I wonder if I can use that adapter? Yes the big behemoth videocard is going to be right on top of it!!!

Thanks very much Asus.

f) Where is the Second LAN Ethernet adapter? This is typical offer of all Deluxe or Premium motherboards.

IN CONCLUSION:

This motherboard's design sucks. Sorry but it does. I have no doubt it can be very powerful as it claims it will be using PCI-E 2.0 and 1333 FSB, and the bells and whitles.

With all the design flaws already pointed it might still be OK or passable, if you plan to go with only one video card, but with a very small space to manage a clean build.
To make things worse I can already picture the hell it's going to be setting up a high-end system on Crossfire using this motherboard.

Asus P5E3 is a small motherboard, no doubt about it, and the space between the components is very bad...

I think Asus is missing the point. Again, I've been an Asus consumer for many years, and I've heard people telling me that they were going downhill...

I still cannot see the price of this motherboard to be OVER $300!!
The design just doesn't justfies a price like that, plus forcing me to buy SATA DVD drives, and a low latency DDR3 module, if I can find it or if I can get drunk and burn money for a 4gb DDR3 set (approx $900)

And after seeing one I'm starting to believe it. I own an Asus P5W DH motherboard, and here is a picture of it... very decent design... compare it side by side with the P5E3, and you will see a big difference.

..."

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer