PCB Design and Functionality

Even the most traditional “standard” mainboard usually has at least one distinguishing feature. It may be unusual components layout, special cooling system, rare interface, unique bundled accessories or something else. And what catches your eye when you look at Asus P6T?

The first thing that attracted my attention was the CPU socket. I am talking not about the actual LGA1366 socket, but the retention holes around it: there are two sets of those. The distance between the farther holes corresponds to the LGA1366 retention, while the closest holes are fit for an LGA775 cooler!

It is a very interesting solution. Once you decide to upgrade the old platform, you won’t need to run looking for LGA1366 retention kit for your cooler, if it exists at all for your particular cooler model. And you won’t need to buy a new CPU cooler, because your good old LGA775 cooler may be efficient enough to cope with the new CPU, too. Of course, it only makes sense if you decide to upgrade using new Asus P6T mainboard. The photos suggest, that even top Asus mainboards based on Intel X58 Express chipset, such as P6T Deluxe or Rampage II, cannot boast the same compatibility with LGA775 CPU coolers.

If we continue checking out the upper part of Asus P6T PCB, we will see a pretty common and well thought-through layout. Eight-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry uses low RDS MOSFET transistors, ferrite core chokes and high-quality Japanese solid-state capacitors. All power connectors are placed very conveniently, there are six DDR3 DIMM slots. The only thing we were a little surprised to find were the Power On and Reset buttons that from now on are more and more often placed on the upper part of the PCB instead of the lower part, where they used to be before. We have seen these buttons in exact same place on Gigabyte mainboards, too, which are going to compete with Asus P6T today. The buttons are big enough, they are highlighted when the board is on or receives power, so you can clearly see them at all times.

The processor voltage regulator MOSFET are topped with conventional aluminum heatsinks, without any sophisticated twists, while the unusually shaped heatsink fins on the chipset North Bridge does in fact catch your eye.

To wind up the description of the cooling system on Asus P6T, we would like to offer you a photo of the ICH10R chipset South Bridge heatsink. Its shape is also far from traditional:

Looks like they had to move the buttons to the upper part of the mainboard PCB, because there is simply absolutely no free space at the bottom, where most connectors, pin-connectors and additional controllers always take all the spots.

Two blue PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots for graphics cards work at full speed; the third white slot works at x4 speed. Asus P6T mainboard is equipped with JMicron JMB363 controller responsible for PATA and SATA interface implementation. One of its SATA ports is laid out on the back panel as eSATA (SATA On-the-Go). The second port is split into two with the help of JMicron JMB322 controller. They do not require any drivers and are very convenient for backup needs, for instance (Drive Xpert Technology). The IEEE1394 support is provided by VIA VT6315N controller.