ASUS P5W DH Deluxe WiFi-AP

The flagship of ASUS’ Core 2 line is currently the P5W DH Deluxe. This motherboard is based on Intel’s 975X “enthusiast” chipset and fully supports ATI’s CrossFire technology, in fact we’ve been using the P5W DH Deluxe for the past month as our standard platform for Core 2 testing, most recently running a pair of Radeon X1950 XTX cards in CrossFire mode for our ATI’s Radeon X1950 XTX: Quad SLI Killer? article. We also used the P5W DH Deluxe to take a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo E6400 to 3.4GHz as well.

The P5W DH Deluxe is technically a little older than the P5B Deluxe, but it’s a pretty fully featured motherboard. The P5W DH Deluxe relies on Intel’s older ICH7R South Bridge instead of ICH8, so the storage subsystem of the motherboard’s chipset isn’t quite as robust, only supporting up to 4 Serial ATA drives. On the P5W DH Deluxe three SATA ports are driven by the chipset, while the fourth and fifth ports are connected to Silicon Image’s Sil 4723 controller. Because the board only has three SATA ports that are native to the chipset, creating a 4-drive RAID array is difficult as you’re forced to rely on ASUS’ software which is a little more difficult to manipulate than Intel’s. Finally, driving the SATA port above the primary PCI Express graphics slot, just behind the audio connectors, as well as the eSATA port on the backplate of the P5W DH Deluxe is JMicron’s JMB363 storage controller.

Like the P5B Deluxe, the P5W DH Deluxe supports ASUS’s Q-Connector feature, you’ll also note that all of the motherboards major components are color-coded, just like the P5B Deluxe (the primary graphics slot is the orange slot by the way).

Also like the P5B board, the P5W DH Deluxe boasts an 8-phase power delivery system. In fact you’ll see that ASUS uses the same low height capacitors that are found on the P5B Deluxe, including polymer capacitors. We had no problems getting our largest CPU coolers to fit on the P5W DH Deluxe.


The P5W DH Deluxe also uses the same Realtek RTL8187L 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN controller that’s found on the P5B Deluxe, right down to the same location on the motherboard.

ASUS provides tons of space between the PCI Express graphics slots. ASUS refers to this as their two-slot thermal design. Basically it refers to the fact that ASUS provides two slots between the PCI Express x16 graphics slots, often times to save space on the board the two graphics slots are only separated by one PCI slot, or a single x1 PCI Express slot. By integrating more space between the graphics slots, ASUS provides more space for graphics cards with dual-slot coolers like the GeForce 7900 GTX and Radeon X1900 XTX. This provides better airflow between the cards, helping to reduce board temperatures.

Dual Gigabit Ethernet done right

Handling networking duties on the P5W DH Deluxe are two Marvell 88E8053 Gigabit LAN controllers. Both controllers are bound by the PCI Express interface, so the secondary network controller on the P5W DH Deluxe isn’t afflicted by the PCI bus like the P5B Deluxe board is.