Asus P5AD2 Premium (Intel 925X) Review
Asus P5AD2 Board Features
The design of the board produces only the best of impressions: the power connectors are fitted over the edges of the board, with the latches to the DIMM slots positioned at quite a distance from the PCI Express x16 slot.
The way the IDE connectors for the integrated and additional controller are positioned is also convenient.
Now let's look at the processor socket - the orientation and design are completely standard (by the way, the processor socket is made by Foxconn (so far?) ).
Under the socket, there is a 4-pin power connector for the processor cooler (CPU_FAN1). In fact, it is allowed to plug in coolers having 3-pin connectors.
Besides the CPU_FAN1, there are three more connectors like that onboard: the PWR_FAN1 - near the north bridge, the CHA_FAN2 - near the PCIE x16 slot, and the CHA_FAN1 - near the battery. It should be noted that one CPU_FAN1 connector offers support for the Q-Fan feature which allows adjusting the rotational speed versus temperature (e.g., on Abit AA8 DuraMAX there were three connectors like that).
Unfortunately, only a passive radiator is fitted on the chipset which simply gets red-hot (which is easily seen on the open expo stand!).
So, it is advisable that future users of Asus P5AD2 install some additional cooling (a must, if used for overclocking).
Under the north bridge, there are four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules. They are partitioned into two groups with two slots in each. The first two slots refer to the first controller channel, with the other two to the second controller.
That is, compared to the PCB design of i865PE/i875P boards, there are no fundamental differences. Even the maximum memory capacity remained 4 GB as before. Once voltage is applied to the board, a big green LED positioned near the PCIE x1 slots immediately lights up.
There is a PCI Express x16 slot (for video cards) with a latch installed onboard.
Besides it, on Asus P5AD2 there are two PCI Express x1 slots and a three regular PCI slots.
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