ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer Motherboard

Introduction

There are many motherboards out there to chose from. One of the biggest questions out there is, which motherboard should I chose if I'm looking for a reliable, stable, and powerful motherboard for audio, video, 3D modeling/animation and photo editing? These tasks are usually very demanding on all parts of the system from the CPU to the memory to even the hard drives.

When thinking about using high-performance motherboards for home, business, or even studio use, the ASUS P7P55 WorkStation SuperComputer Motherboard is a great choice. Don't be fooled by the name of this motherboard. While it is a perfect choice for work related applications, this motherboard is also an exceptional choice for gamers.

Since the P7P55 WorkStation SuperComputer Motherboard is based on the P55 chipset, it comes with socket LGA1156. There are many options that can be used with LGA1156, like for example the Intel Core i5, Core i7 and Xeon 3400 Series Server based Processors. ASUS allows users to use all these different series processors to fit the customers needs. Since we are going to be working with server based RAID cards and hard drives as well as server based applications, we are going to be using a Xeon based processor, the Intel Xeon X3470.

There are many very exciting features that come with the ASUS P7P55 WorkStation SuperComputer Motherboard, like for example the 16+3 Phase Power Design and T.Probe Microchip. The 16+3 Phase VRM design has 16-phase for vCore and extra 3-phase for the Memory controller inside the CPU to provide the highest power efficiency. This allows the motherboard to generate less heat to effectively enhance the overclocking capabilities of the processor.

ASUS has a new design on most of their new boards called the Xtreme Phase Design. This special design allows the VRM to provide unique phase angles per phase to offer the best in multiple stages of use ensuring leading efficiency. But that's not all, with this new Xtreme Phase Design, ASUS also included hardware based automatic switching so depending on the load present on the system the VRM will automatically scale down to as little as 4 phases for idle or basic tasks and increases to its maximum of 16 phases when under moderate or heavy load.

The T.Probe feature on the ASUS's Xtreme Design motherboard detects and balances power phase loads and temperatures in real-time. This helps spread the load on the components to extend the overall lifetime of the components, as well as lead to a more stable system.

ASUS didn't stop here, they also included the new low RDS (on) MOSFETs, ferrite core chokes and Japanese made conductive polymer capacitors to allow for longer component life and minimum power loss.

There are only a few more things that need to be mentioned. First of all, this motherboard is Windows 7 Ready, which means that you will not have any problems installing drivers and other applications that come with the motherboard on Windows 7 based systems. This saves tons of headaches and time during installation of Windows and this ensure that everything will be stable and compatible on your system. Turbo V Evo is also included with this motherboard which we will go into more detail later on in this review, but to just put it simply, Turbo V Evo helps overclock your system automatically with a click of a button. And finally, so I won't forget, this motherboard comes with both SLI and ATI Crossfire X Technology which means you will be able to combine the most powerful video cards in SLI or Crossfire X configuration to get the extra frames per second that you will need in  your games.