Gadgetory

so today we'll be doing a quick unboxing of the asou p7h 57 d - v evo now that may be a slightly confusing model number two most but I can explain it p7 is the latest generation of Intel processors so it denotes socket 1156 age 57 is the chipset D means that it includes both true USB 3.0 and true SATA 6 gigabits per second I don't know what the V means and I don't know what the Evo means but I was pretty close okay so is Windows 7 ready as I mentioned before it includes support for LGA 1156 that means Core i3 Core i5 and core i7 but you should also note that on the core i3 in the core i5 dual course you also have support for the onboard video included with those processors that feature won't work with Core i5 quad cores or with core i7s so let's go around to the back and see what asus has to say for themselves with this board you've got SLI and CrossFireX support which seems at first like kind of a weird thing for an H series chipset which is a value series chipset but this board is quite feature complete and really it gives us Zeus a way to release a powerful board with lots of features that includes support for onboard video as well as hybrid video should you require it so let's have a look at the accessories that are included the first thing we find is an i/o shield this is their premium looking i/o shield with the fluffy back silvery thing on the back and a black okay moving on then we have an eSATA and USB 2.0 PCI backplate next we have an IDE cable should you require it maybe you have an old DVD Drive that uses one then we have an SLI bridge it's flexible then we have their Q connectors so this makes life a little bit easier for you if you're using an older case that doesn't have the the USB connectors in a block and it also makes your life a little bit easier for installing the front switches okay then we have four SATA cables to right angle and two straight there black cables which I always like to see it makes your build look just a little bit nicer have like bright red or like bright yellow cables included okay then we've got a user's guide which includes a support DVD as well as an assist occur don't use this DVD download the latest drivers and utilities off the Asus website all right let's get the mid plate a Seuss's big thing for the last couple of years it's been green packaging they don't use any foam in their packaging uh you know see piece of cardboard on the back of the motherboard instead of fun it hasn't affected the reliability of the board so it's it's a great great step that they've made alright so like most LGA 1156 boards and by that I mean all there is an LGA 1156 socket right in the middle so that's where you're gonna have your support for core i3 Core i5 and core i7 up at the top of the board not quite in its ideal location but it should still be quite easy to do cable management up to here you've got your 8 pin CPU connector so that's one indicator that this is not a low end board is that you do have an 8 pin CPU connector rather than a 4 pin it's designed to deliver quite a lot of power to the CPU would be quite comfortable overclocking a core i7 on this particular board moving along to the right we have a Seuss's trademark dual channel ddr3 with their easy install system here so that means that you've only got a clip on the top side and all you do is slide the module in from the one side and then clip it in from the top very nice to see here we've got our 24 pin connector as well as a Seuss's mem ok button so that makes sure that no matter what modules you install in here you press that button it'll run them at a safe setting that makes it so you can post and then adjust according to what you require ok moving down the board we've got the chipset covered by a quite ineffective looking heatsink but that should tell you a little bit about the chipset here the age 57 chipset is not really doing a whole lot it doesn't get very hot so asus is able to make more of a fashion statement with their heatsink rather than I have it actually worried about it cooling a really hot chip next we have our IDE connector which is there and then we have the 6 SATA 2 ports that are going to be run off the age 57 chipset down along the bottom of the board we have our front panel connectors as well as a couple oh I buy a couple I mean four USB 2.0 front headers all of these blue ones are for USB 2.0 and then down at the very bottom here we have our SATA 6 gigabits per second connectors personally I would have liked to see these up where the IDE connector was rather than down there but I guess that's life okay then we have firewire support that's nice we have a FireWire port right here and then our front audio is right there so that is where all the ports are now let's have a look at the PCI slot layout number man's racing ahead of me here PCI slot the hood is down here there you go okay so we have two PCIe 1x two PCI three PCIe 1x pardon me and then you have two PCIe 16x slots but you can clearly see here the pins only go up to here so this one runs at 16x electrical and this one runs at 8x Electrical now that doesn't actually have any real-world impact on crossfire configuration so don't worry about that but if you're running a single graphics card you're gonna want to throw it in here just because all right here they're using their fortress of solitude style MOSFET coolers here I really like these I think they're very stylish looking and they do a reasonably good job of cooling these are held down by pushpins and so we can have a look at the top one there as well very cool Zeus has really figured out color schemes on their boards in the last couple years I mean that's uh it used to be like you know the cardboard yellow orange e Brown PCBs and just random lookin now everything's sort of like an icy sort of themed look moving on next we have USB 2.0 ports one two three four that is all not a whole lot in terms of USB 2.0 ports one ps2 one optical audio out we have HDMI DVI and VGA out then we have firewire and eSATA one Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 audio did I mention USB 3.0 so you've actually got a total of six USB ports and two of them are USB 3.0 now with so many cases having four front USB ports I can see why a SUSE opted to include more internal headers rather than including more ports on the back of the board so that seems like a pretty smart move thank you for checking up my unboxing at the p7h 57 D - V Evo