ASUS P5B-E

Expansion Slots

• 3 x PCI (32 bit)
• 3 x PCI-Express (x1)
• 1 x PCI-Express (x16 Graphics)

Back Panel

• 1 x 10/100/1000 (LAN)
• 1 x 7.1 Audio I/O
• 1 x Coaxial (Phono)
• 1 x eSATA II
• 1 x Parallel (LPT)
• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard
• 1 x PS/2 Mouse
• 1 x SPDIF-Out
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1

Internal I/O

• 1 x 24pin (V)
• 1 x 4pin (V)
• 1 x CD-In
• 1 x Floppy
• 1 x FP Audio Header
• 1 x IDE
• 1 x IEEE1394
• 4 x Memory Slots
• 7 x SATA II
• 1 x Serial (COM) Header
• 1 x SPDIF-Out Header
• 3 x USB2.0/1.1 Header

Mew

I must say that this wasn’t my first choice of motherboard for 2 reasons:

Firstly, I have had 2 Asus motherboards die on me in the past (one was a slow death as the memory slots failed one by one).

Secondly I was concerned about the layout. The alternate board I looked at was a Gigabyte one which for me would have been better laid out. The reason is that I have 3 PCI TV cards in the HTPC and only one small PCI-e card (Wi-Fi). The PCI TV cards are right against a passively cooled Nvidia 8500GT based graphics card so I am a little worried about airflow and cooling. So far though, I have not had a problem and the board is performing fine.