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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.
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.
ps; i am aware that it looks like the originator is me because ive been sniffing around for this mobo...i assure you that im not.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=Striker+Extreme&SLanguage=en-us
But honestly, I never encountered any signigiant problems during my testing. Sure, the slow SATA speed results from HDTach bothered me, but that may have been a communications error between HDTach and the SATA controller (no being able to properly register the correct SATA speed when everything was running fine).
Furthermore, I decided not to run the RightMark Audio tests as I received all zeros for the CPU utilization during that test. Yeah, no CPU load when running audio would be nice, but would also be impossible.
As I had concluded in my article, the Asus Striker is a sweet piece of hardware that needs a few good BIOS revisions before it'll start to shine (already great though).
Hmmm, I wonder if some extreme water cooling could get this board past 4GHz? I wouldn't doubt it
I'm curious, the particular board you reviewed; did Asus send it to you, or is it an off-the-shelf retail part?
And yes, Asus did send us this board. They didn't cherry pick it however. No one at Asus tested a batch full of Strikers and sent us the best of the lot. What we got would pretty much be what the average consumer could expect if they went out an bought a Striker of their own.
But as for that issue of some Strikers hitting a 500MHz plus FSB, those review sites actually sent their Striker back to Asus to get a better one that would hit 500MHz plus.
That seems unfair. In relation, we've had memory modules pass through Neoseeeker with the manufacturers claim that said modules will hit some very high timings. When they don't meet these specs, we send them back and get a pair that do meet spec. But we always report on out initial findings, regardless of how good or how bad the performance was.
The average consumer can't send their board back to Asus and request one that'll hit some higher performance standard. All of our testing and results are what the average consumer can expect if they we to purchase the same part (though performance may vary slightly).
Furthermore, some sites will claim an outrageous overclock acheivement regardless of stability. For us, it isn't enought that the board simply POSTs, but it has to run our tests and cannot crash. If it does crash, we count that as unstable and would not claim it as our final figure. Stability is of the utmost importance.
I wasn't implying that you had received a hand-picked board, I was just asking.
I am always skeptical, however, when manufacturers supply reviewers with product.
If you have taken time to visit the Striker Extreme forum, I think you will find that you were fortunate to receive a relatively good mobo.
I hope Asus decides to step up and resolve the many issues with this board.
It's like 'Consumer Reports'. They will go out and buy the products they review and rate. They won't accept a product direct from the factory. A car maker could have a team of mechanics rebuild and blueprint the car from scratch, invalidating the quality of their production products.
But I do agree in that Asus has to clean up the Striker. Most of its ills right now lay within the BIOS. I'll probably check back with subsequent BIOS revisions and see what happens, and keep the article updated as such.
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6850 batch #L723A943
RAM: 2GB Corsair Dominator 10000
Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme (bios 1303)
Video card: Evga 8800 GTX Super overclocked version
Hard drives: 3 (750GB Western Digital 7500AAKS)
Power Supply: 750W PC Power & Cooling Quad
And a VapoChill LS that is keeping the CPU into the negative tempas. And all I can get is a measly 3.7Ghz
Any professional help would be appreciated
Adam