A Closer Look at the ASUS P5Q PRO


Now at first glance the overall layout of the P5Q Pro appears quite good, but there are few small issues. First, by placing the floppy connector at the very bottom of the board, ASUS has made cable management a nightmare. However, floppy drives are all but obsolete, so this is a nitpicky detail. Secondly, because the IDE connector is positioned so close to the ATX power connector, installing and removing the IDE cable can be somewhat tricky, especially when the nearest black memory slot is occupied. These are minor issues, but they could easily be rectified by moving both connectors to the right edge of the motherboard, where there is more than ample free space.


The CPU socket area on this motherboard is quite clean, surrounded by the low-profile northbridge and MOSFET heatsink, and a number of solid capacitors (no cheap electrolytic caps here!). There should be no clearance issues with the majority of CPU coolers. Interestingly, ASUS chose to not cool the MOSFETs above the CPU socket, which is a slightly bizarre omission since even the budget P5Q and P5Q-C feature two heatsinks. As you can see, the P5Q PRO comes with an eight-phase power design, courtesy of the high-quality Yageo R68 ferrite chokes. The bumblebee-themed memory slots are well spaced, and also benefit from a two-phase power design ensuring stable voltage to your DDR2 modules. The little chip beside the rightmost yellow memory slot is the EPU (Energy Processing Unit). Lastly, notice the blue jumper, which is used to unlock the CPU overvoltage options (1.72V-2.10V).


Here we have the PCI/PCI Express expansion area. The PCI-E x16 slots are spaced far enough apart to accommodate just about any cooling solution. There are also an impressive three PCI-E x1 slots, which will come in handy as an increasing number of PCI-E components are being released. At the top of the image, you may notice that the northbridge is also outfitted with a two-phase power design, which is great to see on a mainstream motherboard.

The blue jumper next to the legacy PCI slots is used to clear the CMOS. It becomes quite difficult to access when the first PCI slot is occupied. Thankfully, we never once had to use it during our time with the board.

Next we have the southbridge, which is cooled by a small push-pin heatsink, and does not share a heat pipe with the other coolers. The blue jumper to the right of the southbridge unlocks northbridge overvoltage options above 1.90V To the right of the battery is one of the three 3-pin case fan headers.

As you can see, there is an abundance of Serial ATA connectivity. The six red ports come from the ICH10R and support RAID 0/1/5/10. The other two are controlled by the Silicon Image Sil5723CNU storage processor, and can be used for RAID 0/1 in coordination with the Drive Xpert feature. These ports cannot be used to boot from unless you enable Drive Xpert Control in the BIOS and select 'normal mode'. The LSIL-FW3227-100 controller supplies the two FireWire ports. Not pictured is the Marvell 88SE611-NAA1 controller, which provides Ultra DMA 66/100/133 IDE and eSATA capabilities.


As you can see above, ASUS apparently ignored the criticisms levied against the P5K PRO, since once again the SATA ports are placed in such a way that some of the eight ports are unusable when a dual-slot graphics card is installed in the second PCI-E x16 slot. In the above pictures, we used a standard 9-inch long Radeon HD 3870. Those who choose to use even longer graphics cards, such as the 10.5-inch Radeon HD 3870 X2 will lose all four top-row SATA ports. So keep that in mind if you were planning to purchase this model for its CrossFire capabilities, since you will be relegated to single-slot graphics cards…unless you don’t mind losing some SATA connectivity, of course.


The small square chip is the new Realtek ALC1200 eight-channel HD audio codec, which is the successor to the extremely popular ALC888/889 series. The Winbond W83667HG-A is a recently released Super I/O controller, which not only provides support for legacy devices (PS/2 port, serial port, floppy drive), but also SMART FAN monitoring capabilities. Just out of sight is the miniature Atheros AR8121 Gigabit Ethernet controller, which is to the right of the Winbond chip.

The rear I/O panel may look a little sparse, but all the essentials are there, and you must not forget the eSATA & FireWire ports on the PCI expansion bracket.


The back of the board is devoid of any distinctive features, there are just PCB traces, solder points, and the ends of the plastic push-pins that hold the chipset coolers in place.