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The Bundle

A few of us here in the lab have a long-running joke about ASUS practicing black magic when it comes to stuffing their usual helping of accessories into their motherboard boxes. It seems that no matter how hard we try, we usually have nothing short of a frustrating time attempting to put everything back in the box without it bulging or being unable to close. That said, today's P5WD2-E is a little on the lighter side as far as extras go:

• 6x SATA cables
• 3x SATA power adapter cables (two plugs each)
• 2x IDE cables (40-conductor, 80-conductor)
• Floppy cable
• USB/gameport expansion bracket (two ports/one port)
• Serial port expansion bracket
• Firewire expansion bracket
• User guide/software CD
• InterVideo WinDVD Suite

I'm glad to see that there is a generous serving of SATA data and power cables -- there's nothing more infuriating than coming home with a trunk full of new computer parts, getting into the house, settling down with your toolkit, and being in the heat of the moment building that new rig when you realize that you're missing a stupid cable or two.

Overall, I'm generally pleased with the bundle, if not for the fact that we've got lots of cables and expansion brackets, then at least because it comes with a great DVD/multimedia suite from InterVideo. We were quite spoiled by the previous P5WD2 Premium package, which contained ASUS' optional "Wifi-TV" card. Alas, we have no such card this time.

The Board

The layout and design of the P5WD2-E almost appears to be a duplicate of the P5WD2 at first glance -- but then you start to notice the little improvements. A quick trim here, a few additions there, and ... this is definitely an upgrade of the P5WD2 design.

First of all, the P5WD2-E Premium features an astonishing eight usable SATA ports. Eight ports are all very conveniently located in the bottom-left (or bottom-right, depending on your perspective) of the board, while a ninth hides away in the form of eSATA over on the rear I/O panel. I just said this board featured eight usable SATA ports, but there's a ninth on the back -- huh?

Intel's ICH7R south bridge provides four SATA ports, while Marvell's 88SE6141 controller chip provides another 4 channels, with the last channel being shared between the eight port (in the cluster) and the lone eSATA port on the rear. Only one of those ports can be used at once -- giving us a total sum of eight usable ports. That's still a heck of a lot of ports, though the P5WD2 clocked in at an also better-than-average 6 ports (5 internal, 1 external).

The "trim" part comes in the form of two less IDE channels. Intel's ICH7R cuts down on the number of available IDE channels to only 1, no doubt because Intel is hoping to move away from legacy interconnects. ASUS undid this with the previous P5WD1 by providing another two IDE channels on top of the ICH7R's one by use of an ITE IDE controller chip -- but now that chip is nowhere to be found on the P5WD2-E, hence the single IDE channel. I, for one, am all for reducing clutter on the board. The IDE usage in my PCs is limited to DVD burners now.

The last major physical change between the P5WD2 and P5WD2-E is the new arrangement of expansion slots. In the previous design, there were two PCI slots wedged in between both PCI-Express x16-sized slots, followed by a PCI-Express x1 slot, and then finally a single PCi slot. With two dual-slot video cards in both PCI-Express x16 slots, you ended up covering one PCI slot and the single PCI-Express peripheral slot.

With the new board layout, the "two dual-slot video cards" penalty doesn't change, but it leaves one PCI slot in further proximity from the second video card. The PCI-Express x1 slot has also been replaced by a PCI-Express x4 slot. The entire arrangement may not bring too many direct benefits, but it looks a heck of a lot neater.

The rear I/O panel is home to a modern variety of connectors. First of all, we have our Intel HD audio with its 7.1-channel analog and S/PDIF coaxial/optical outputs. The codec used is the Realtek ALC882M, while the previous P5WD2 featured a Realtek ALC882D. This is good stuff, as I've been hearing good things about Intel HD audio. Few people will probably want to buy a sound card after buying a P5WD2-E.

The rest of the connectors featured here include dual Gigabit Ethernet (great for servers), the above-mentioned eSATA port, four USB 2.0 ports, and the relatively unexciting legacy parallel and PS/2 ports. Another four USB 2.0 ports are provided via pin headers on the motherboard. A single Firewire port is also provided via pin headers.

The actual board layout is admirable, and is marred by only one defect -- the age-old RAM slot blockage. Other than that single complaint, I'm quite pleased with the layout. The required Molex power connector is not located in some far-off place that would necessitate draping ugly cables all over your case, but rather right next to the 24-pin ATX connector. Both the 975X north bridge and ICH7R south bridge are cooled passively with appreciably-large heat sinks, which will bode well for the silent PC freaks, but maybe not so much for the overclockers. Even the single IDE connector is facing over the edge of the board, which is something that I've found to be beneficial.

ASUS has done a great job improving an already outstanding layout.