Motherboard

The Striker Extreme is the chief model of the 680i SLI line of motherboards from ASUS, designed to be the ultimate gaming motherboard. The 680i chipset endows the Striker Extreme with two PCI-E 16x slots, one PCI-E 8x slot, one PCI-E 1x slot, two PCI slots, 10 USB ports, 6 SATA II ports, and one ATA-133 port. NVIDIA MediaShield technology supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5. It also supports JBOD, which stands for “Just a Bunch Of Disks” and refers to when several hard drives are simply combined into larger partitions, without the benefits and drawbacks of a RAID configuration. Two firewire ports are provided by the VIA VT6308P chip, dual gigabit ethernet ports by Marvell 88E1116 chips, and two external “SATA-on-the-go” ports are converted from a PCI-E 1x slot by the Silicon Image 3132 chip. Last, but not least, onboard 8-channel High Definition Audio is courtesy of the SupremeFX proprietary audio card that is built upon the ADI 1988B codec.


At first glance, you will notice the elaborate cooling system surrounding the CPU socket, which is made up of solid copper heatsinks and heatpipes. The latter relies upon the evaporation and condensation of a liquid contained inside it. For example, when the southbridge chip heats the liquid, it will eventually turn into vapor, and rise up toward the heatsink mounted on the northbridge chip. As heat is released into the air, the vapor turns back into liquid, and drips back down to the southbridge to start the process again. This method of cooling covers the CPU voltage regulators, too, and is efficient enough that it does not require the assistance of a traditional chipset fan. That means less noise and, with no moving parts, it never has to be replaced.



The layout of the board isn’t anything to write home about. The Serial ATA ports are on a 90-degree tilt, but are located too low to be easily accessible when oversized video cards are installed. The seldom-used Floppy connector takes up prime real estate alongside the RAM slots, a major oversight on the part of ASUS. The case’s front panel connectors would be far more suited to that space, but instead are relegated to the proverbial bowels with the auxiliary USB and firewire connectors. Onboard power, reset, and CMOS clear buttons are also placed at the bottom, which makes them impossible to reach when the lower-most expansion slot is filled. For the first two, it’s a moot point, bearing in mind that they would only be used when the motherboard is not mounted in a case. Regardless, that CMOS clear button should most definitely be in a more reachable spot, if only for the sake of overclocker sanity. If you’re into extreme amounts of cooling, five fans and three temperature sensors are supported by additional connections proliferated around the lower half of the board. A growing trend in high-performance motherboards, all solid-state capacitors are used for longer life and greater reliability.


The I/O panel showcases the PS/2 keyboard and mouse, SPDIF out, four USB, one firewire, two ethernet, and two external SATA connections, in addition to an LCD POST display and onboard LED switch. The POST display shows you, in plain English, exactly what is happening as your computer turns on, in addition to notifying you of any errors that may occur. The days of listening to beeps or even deciphering number codes to figure out what’s wrong are over. Upon successful boot, it will present any of a number of programmable bits of information, including the system time or how long the computer has been running. The LED switch controls the numerous blue LEDs placed along the edges of the motherboard; ASUS claims they allow for system work without external light sources, but they just look pretty.