Asus P7P55D Evo LGA-1156 Motherboard Preview

Other Features
Whilst specifications are always very important it is often the little things, like how a board is to work from when you first construct the build to the day to day running with overclocking and general use. These little things are what make a good board truly excellent and Asus have certainly put in the effort, they haven’t just swapped the socket and chipset over but have thought about the design of this board very well. The first interesting feature on this mid range board is the increased use of error LEDs for the main components, which is something Asus are calling Q-LED. This is an alternative to the two alphanumeric debug LED which are found on the more expensive boards, but remember this is a mid-range product. These multi-coloured LEDs allow you to more quickly diagnose why the system isn’t booting and what components are or are not at fault, there are LEDs for CPU, DRAM, VGA and BOOT DEVICE. Asus have also provided two on-the-board buttons for On and Off, as well as a CMOS clear button on the I/O plate to help with troubleshooting and overclocking. These are certainly welcome features and the complete lack of jumpers is also makes this board a true joy to work with. Gone are the days of trying to carefully remove and then replace the CMOS jumper in a very over crowded area of the board, which usually involves several attempts after dropping the jumper.

Another change not shown on this pre-production board but something that we have been informed about is what Asus are calling Q-DIMM. Basically it’s a simple redesign of the DIMM clips on one side, to make it easier to change the memory on the board and to avoid interference with the graphics card in the top PCI-E slot. Put simply they have changed the left DIMM clips (the lower ones when a board has been installed) so they now have no protruding grip, and you use the normal right clips to install the memory. Personally although this is only a small change, if it does actually appear on the production board, it will be a very welcome one.

Unfortunately Intel have decided that it would be a good idea to have another change in HSF mounting hole positions, which Asus can do nothing about. So current 1366 coolers and even 775 coolers will be incompatible, so it really is a completely new setup and we really have to ask, why!? It is possible that Intel have improved the mounting system on their retail coolers for the lower end i5 and i7 models which requires different hole locations. We do however feel that its much more likely that they’ve saved money by producing cheaper HSFs for a range of processors where the heat output will be lower than the current Bloomfield i7s, keeping the more expensive high end HSFs for the higher end chips, but this of course is all speculation and I expect we will never know what Intel were thinking (or not) when they made this decision. What this means for most of us is that we can’t use the current crop of aftermarket i7 coolers designed for 1366 motherboards, many of which are frankly excellent. Hopefully the hard done by HSF manufacturers are on to this issue already and there will be 1156 coolers & adapter kits for some of the great 1366 coolers already on the market, before the release of Intel’s new 1156 boards and CPUs.