Board Design

P4PE back panel

Another view of the upper half of the P4PE

Board layout

ASUS’s engineering team is well known for its unique board designs. When most motherboard manufacturers are implementing the same basic layout, it’s not uncommon to see ASUS come out with a board design that is totally out of the ordinary.

For the P4PE, we’ve got a fairly crowded layout, as the P4PE is chocked full of features, yet it only utilizes a 12.0” by 9.0” frame. For instance, ASUS motherboards have traditionally been one of the few designs that actually have enough space between the DIMM sockets and AGP slot to allow for both components to be easily installed. But with the P4PE, end users will have to install their system memory before installing the AGP card. Again, this is one negative aspect that you’ll find in 90% of the motherboards on the market, so the P4PE is certainly not unique in this respect.

AGP slot and DIMM socket are located very close to each other

Some capacitors on the P4PE appear to be dangerously close to the Socket 478 interface, but in practice this is not the case. The 20-pin ATX connector is located on the right edge of the motherboard, so it doesn’t interfere with airflow near the CPU. The ATX12V connector is just below the CPU interface, which is a bit inconvenient but shouldn’t be a problem since the cable itself isn’t very large.

For troubleshooting, the P4PE features a green power LED on the lower portion of the motherboard. This is helpful for diagnosing dead motherboards. If the green LED doesn’t shine when you connect the power cable to the motherboard, you know that the motherboard isn’t receiving power and is likely dead. A red LED is placed just below the AGP slot, this LED only shines when you install a 3.3V AGP card in the AGP slot. When this occurs, the system cannot be turned on to prevent damaging the AGP slot.

The sixth (blue) PCI slot is known as the BlueMagic PCI slot. It’s unique from the others because it’s designed to support wireless LAN cards. ASUS will be introducing its own wireless LAN solutions later this year that ASUS hopes will make a perfect companion for the BlueMagic slot.

The lower half of the P4PE

Overall the P4PE’s layout is well implemented. We just wished it stood out from the crowd like ASUS motherboards frequently do.