The Board

I have to say that the P8P67 Deluxe is a nice looking board. I like the curved design of the heatsinks and also the wave graphic on them gives a feeling of flow. The board is still ATX form factor, but somehow, like the WS, it seems cleaner. So let's start where we usually do and get the walk around going.

with the exception of the heatsinks and the USB 3.0 header, this could be a twin of the P8P67 WS Revolution at the upper end of the board. We see the same MemOK! button right next to the TPU switch. Still, it looks clean; a close inspection will also show the careful trace tuning that ASUS did here.

Remember how we told you ASUS responded to our comments on the 8-Pin Aux power connector? Well, here is a different example of their response. They have moved it to the upper edge of the board. This provides some extra clearance for people with fat fingers (like me) to get the plug in easily.

In this shot we find a few interesting items. The first is the PLX bridge there between the primary PCI-E and the first PCI slot. The PLX bridge has been used by ASUS to offset the inclusion of SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 in the past. My guess is that it is here for USB 3.0 this time, as there should be no need to have one for SATA 3.0 even if it is a Marvell controller.

In the second image you can see the PCI controller; this is the ASMedia ASM1083 which brings support for two PCI ports that are on the board. The three visible PCI-E slots are easy to break down. The one at the bottom is only x4; that is all you will ever get out of it. The next one in line is x8 and the top one is x16 if you only have a GPU in it. As soon as you put another PCI-E card into the second slot, well, you are at x8.

Moving over to the other side of the board, we see the four SATA II ports and the two pair of SATA 3.0 ports. There is a Diagnostic LED on the board here and you can see the TPU chip in plain sight as well. We will talk a little more about the TPU later.

For I/O ASUS has given the P8P67 Deluxe quite a few options. You have the dual GBe LAN (one Intel - one Realtek), six USB 2.0 ports, two powered USB 2.0 ports, two e-SATA ports (one powered one green), a 1394a port, and of course the USB 3.0 ports. The rest is fairly normal with the audio provided by the Realtek ALC889 audio CODEC.

Now, you might be wondering what the blue bulge is above the USB ports; that is ASUS' BT Go module. It provides built in Bluetooth to the P8P67 Deluxe. So start searching for that Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, or more to the point you can use this to quickly transfer files from your phone or laptop to your desktop.