Asus P8P67-M Pro review

Motherboards supporting Sandy Bridge processors are growing in number, but the Asus P8P67-M Pro is the first we’ve seen to opt for the more restrictive dimensions of microATX. Surprisingly, little has been sacrificed in the way of features.

The tiny board somehow crams in three PCI Express x16 slots – two will run at 8x, with the third at 4x – but there’s only room for a single PCI Express x1 slot; no PCI. It has seven SATA ports and a quartet of DIMM sockets that can take up to 32GB of DDR3 RAM.

There’s room for a TPM connector alongside four internal USB 2 headers at the bottom of the board, and for cooling there are three four-pin fan connectors and a fourth without speed control. The backplate wouldn’t be out of place on the best ATX boards, either: eSATA, FireWire and two PS/2 sockets alongside USB 3, USB 2 and optical S/PDIF.

Performance was good, too. A large file write speed over SATA of 386MB/sec compares well to the MSI P67A-GD3’s 369MB/sec, and the Asus wrote small files at 144.6MB/s, also slightly faster than the MSI. Our memory tests also favoured the Asus, with bandwidth and cache results slightly ahead.

The only blip came in our USB 3 benchmarks. When reading large files the Asus managed only 193MB/sec, way down on the MSI’s 451MB/sec. It also read small files at only 17.1MB/sec compared to 30.2MB/sec from the MSI.

The inclusion of a UEFI front-end brings mouse control and improved visuals to what used to be the BIOS, although it isn’t ideal for beginners – the front screen serves up a wealth of potentially confusing diagnostic information, unlike the well-organised MSI.

It isn’t perfect then, but the Asus P8P67-M Pro offers almost everything you’d expect from an ATX board in a more compact form factor. The MSI is still the more rounded option if you have the room, but if you’re building in a smaller case this Asus is the P67 board to choose.

Author: Mike Jennings