Asus Striker Extreme - PAGE 3J. Micah Grunert - Thursday, June 7th, 2007
In terms of design, the Asus Striker Extreme motherboard is of a very typical nature. A CPU socket here, memory goes there, so on and so forth. Let's take a closer at the finer details of this board.
Everything looks to be pretty normal. I like the layout.
The Striker has room for up to six SATA drives, one parallel port channel, and one floppy connector. The vertical style of SATA ports does save some room on the motherboard when compared to the horizontial flat style of port, but does make it more difficult to connect a SATA cable when the board is mounted in the case and you can't see the port. The parallel port is in a bit of an odd location, sitting right beind the 24 pin motherboard power connector, making for a very tight squeeze.
In terms of additional I/O ports, the Asus Striker comes with the usual complement of front panel pin headers for power, reset, hard drive activity and the like (top picture). We also get a IEEE1394 FireWire pin header (in red) with the front panel audio pin headers right next to it. In the right most picture, we find two USB2.0 pin header ports in bright blue.
There is also this lone USB2.0 port (blue base) sitting up next to the 1x slot (the one reserved for the audio expansion card). For front panel USB ports, or an optional rear D-Brachet perhaps.
The optional audio expansion card is a SupremeFX Audio addition that utilizes the ADI 1988 8-channel High Definition Audio Codec. It's nice, but the use of electrolytic capacitors rather than soild states is a bit of a mystery. Regardless, it should sound great.
The Asus Striker Extreme also comes with surface mounted Power, Reset, and Clear CMOS buttons (in order from left to right). Very nice for us hardware testers, not having to jumper a motherboard to life with a screwdriver. I would have liked a skull and crossbones button for the Clear CMOS button, but the label is good enough. :-) Oh, and they glow too.
In the rear, there is the standard gamut of I/O ports, and a few little extras.
PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard
S/PDIF Audio out for wicked sound
Optical out for more audio options
LCD POST Message display for diagnostics
Safety Switch (a child safety switch, the button with the light bulb)
1 IEEE1394 FireWire port for quick connectivity
2 e-SATA ports for speedy data backups
2 Gigabit LAN ports
4 USB2.0 ports
A nice complement of additional ports. Yes, some are incredibly standard, like the PS2 and USB ports, but some of these additons are very nice.
Check out that LCD POST display. It's backlit, and can register the POST sequence when booting, very handy. But it can also programed (through the BIOS) with a user defined string of characters (uppercase letters and numbers only, no puncuations or symbols allowed). It would be nice if it scrolled some userr defined text, but it doesn't. Perhaps ASUS can unlock some of its more advanced feaures with a BIOS update or two. Hint, hint ASUS!
A rear panel FireWire port isn't unheard of, but they are usually relegated to a D-Bracket. Don't worry, ASUS tossed in some D-Brackets, and we'll look at those come the bundled hardware page. But that one extra FireWire port is nice.
That child safety switch, as I have come to term it ... that's an odd one. Its purpose is to cut all power to the motherboard, except for a series of blue surface mounted warning LEDs. It is intended to prevent any short circuits from occuring during the instalation/removal of hardware. You could always unplug the power supply, let the residiual current within it drain for 5 to 10 minutes (actually takes a minute or less).
I have to say ... without a doubt these are the craziest heatpipes I've ever seen. They are considerablly larger than typical heatpipe systems. The three heatsinks around the CPU socket help to cool the MOSFETS (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors) for the VCM (Voltage Controler Module) as they regulate the CPU voltages. The 1/4" copper heat pipe tubing then swoops around the CPU socket zone to a huge heatsink on the Northbridge chipset. That then branches off to the Southbridge cooler -- the one with that 'Republic of Gamers' tag on it.
This is one heck of a setup, and it does cool incredibly well, but there is an issue or two that I have to touch upon. First, that thermal gum is a cheap alternative to that can't even begin to compare with a quality thermal paste. But the real issue is the physical obstruction caused by all this heatpipe plumbing.
As you can see in the above picture, our Noctua NH-U12 CPU cooler is a little big, and it is scraping against one of the VCM heatsinks. This oversized heatpipe system could cause some headaches for end users as an aftermarket cooling solution may not fit properlly. Most will, but some may not.
But one big interference was noted when I had to disassemble the Striker ever so briefly. I had noticed that the casings for one of the Ferrite cores surrounding the CPU socket was cracked. What happened here?
Turns out that the Noctua NH-U 12 tensioning screw was to blame. Seems that the threaded portion of the screw extends just a little too far and had impacted the Ferrite core casing, chipping it ever so slightly. Perhaps I should file down the end of that screw, just to be safe. Poor soldier, wounded in action.
Time to see what goodies ASUS included with the Striker.
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