Product Reviews

With its high performance per watt, Core 2 Duo is ideal for smaller systems. And with an increasing number of innovative chassis employing the microATX standard, there's never been a better time to downsize.

This is the second revision of the PCB, still based around Intel's 945 chipset, but altered to support Core 2 Duo, as well as any other LGA 775 Celeron, Pentium 4 or Pentium D processor at 533, 800 or 1,066MHz FSB speeds. The other noticeable change is an Intel Viiv badge, of which the most compelling implication is support for Intel's Quick Resume power-management features when using the appropriate chipset drivers.

The ICH7 south bridge provides Intel's six-channel High Definition Audio and Matrix Storage Technology, allowing for complex setups such as RAID1 and RAID0 on the same disks via the four SATA 2 connectors. An extra IDE controller

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gives two IDE ports, and there's even a floppy drive connector. Two PCI slots are joined by two PCI Express slots, one 16x and the other 1x. Up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 RAM (at 400, 533 or 667MHz) is supported across the four slots.

With three heatsinks handling the north bridge, south bridge and VRM (voltage regulation module), it runs silently. These do get hot in use, though, so it's best to keep cabling clear. The layout is standard, but you'll need to be careful of the tall and fairly exposed capacitors at the edge of the board.

The backplane is standard too, with PS/2 parallel and serial ports, plus four USB sockets (there are headers for four more). We're disappointed there's no FireWire, though. There are six mini-jacks for analogue audio (the S/PDIF backplate is sold separately), a single Gigabit Ethernet port and a VGA output for the GMA 950 integrated graphics. This can only cope with the most basic 3D games, but will run Vista's Aero Glass effects.

The Asus isn't the very cheapest option, but is one of the few to combine features such as Core 2 Duo support, Gigabit Ethernet and passive cooling. The BIOS is also as mature as we'd expect for a second-revision board, with plenty of provision for over- or underclocking and dynamic fan speed control. So, it's great if you're building a small, quiet system with lots of flexibility, and combined with a decent graphics card it's perfect for a powerful media centre.