Features and Specifications

     It may be nVidia's 650i chipset, but without a doubt it's an Asus motherboard. Asus has loaded the P5N-E with their leading technologies from things like the Q connector to the CrashFree BIOS 2. If you've been as Asus customer before, then you know these features have been standard on all of their boards for a while. Even this mainstream offering has all the features found on their more expensive flagship boards.

     Specifications:     

     CPU's Supported: NTEL LGA775 processor. That includes modern processors like those using a Yorkfield core, and going all the way back to regular Pentium 4 and Pentium D line. The "stock" Front Side Bus range is 533, 800, 1066, and 1333, so you can even slap a Celeron on here.

     Expansion with any motherboard is a must, and the P5NE SLI has you covered. Since it is an SLI board, there are two PCI Express x16 slots.  Keep in mind though that unlike the 680i chipset, these slots will drop to 8x if you use them in an SLI configuration. As for the rest, there are a pair of standard PCI 2.2 and a single PCI Express x1 slot.

     Memory capabilities are standard for an nVidia 600 series chipset with 4 banks that support DDR2-800, 667, and 533 for a maximum of 8 Gigabytes.

     Storage configurations are plentiful as nVidia hasn't abandoned the Parallel ATA standard, yet. There are two PATA channels that support UDMA 133, 100, 66, and 33. There is a single eSATA port built on the multi I/O panel as well as four internal SATA 3.0Gb ports.  RAID is also an option and can be configured as RAID-0, 1, 0+1, or 5.

     Local Area Network support is another one of those standard features. Asus has provided Gigabit (1000Base-T) networking with the Marvel 88E1116 adapter.    

     Onboard Audio is provided by the high definition Realtek ALC883 6 channel codec.