ASUS P7P55D Deluxe Lynnfield Motherboard Review

Hardware Installation

In the Hardware Installation section we examine how major components fit on the motherboard, and whether there are any serious issues that may affect installation and general functionality. Specifically, we are interested in determining whether there is adequate clearance in all critical areas.


As mentioned in the layout description in the previous section, the CPU fan header is in a slightly unusual position on the P7P55D Deluxe, which is to say above the first PCI-E x16 slot. This is not a big deal though, as the area is very easy to access. On the other hand, the TurboV Remote header is a little tougher to get to, especially if you have larger fingers. Plugging in the connector maybe not be too challenging, but removing it is a pain and you have to be quite careful to break either of the two fragile plastic bits.


When installed in the traditional North-South orientation, our Thermalright MUX-120 (ie: update Ultra-120) cooler had no clearance issues on this motherboard, easily clearing the MOSFET heatsinks and with a fair bit of room between the 120MM fan and the first DIMM slot.


However, when we rotated the cooler to the East-West orientation things got a little more tricky. As you can, in this orientation the MUX-120 overhangs the first DIMM slot, and although not visible in the first image, actually overhangs the second DIMM slot a little as well. Although we are showing the memory module coming into contact with the fan clip, even without it there, the memory heatspreader will still touch the heatsink making installation impossible if you have tall heatspreaders. The end result is that if you have a memory kit with tall heatspreaders, you must install them before installing the heatsink, which is obviously a little bit of pain in the derriere. Nevertheless, if you have low-profile memory modules, then there are no clearance problems whatsoever.


Thanks to ASUS' unique Q-DIMM slot design, there can be no problems with memory clips coming into contact with the back of a graphics card. Definitely a great little feature.


With the CPU heatsink in the North-South orientation, there isn't exactly a lot of clearance between the back of the graphics card and the heatsink, which makes accessing the PCI-E x16 slot clip a little bit difficult. However, we simply used a pen to push down on the clips, no big deal.


As mentioned above, the clearance between the CPU heatsink and the back of the graphics card is minimal, which means that if you have one of those very rare graphics cards with a heatsink on the back, it may slightly contact the CPU heatsink. Thankfully, this didn't have any consequences on the installation of either component.

If your particular heatsink is substantially larger than our MUX-120, then you may have to rotate it to the East-West orientation, but at the expense of easy access to the first two memory slots.


Thanks to a well thoughtout expansion slot layout, when you install two dual-slot graphics cards on this motherboard you will not lose access to the precious PCI-E x1 slot.


What if you're a Folder and you want to make use of the third PCI-E x16 slot? Well you definitely can, but you will lose access to the three upward-facing SATA ports. You will also want to ensure that your FireWire/front-panel/USB connectors are pre-installed in their respective headers.



The six 90-degree SATA and IDE ports are obviously accessible no matter how many graphics cards are installed.


Since Thermalright has not yet released their LGA1156 bracket, we cannot properly test to see if there are any clearance issues, however there is nothing on the back of the P7P55D Deluxe that gives us cause for concern.