Features & Specifications
The board features support for Intel LGA 775 processors up to Core 2 Quad Extreme processors with FSB speeds of 1600/1333/1066/800 MHz. The board also supports 45nm Intel processors. The chipset is the nForce 790i SLI. The board supports up to 8Gb of DDR3 running at 1333/1066/800 MHz and 1600MHz overclocked.

Expansion slots on the board include three PCI Express video card slots with support for SLI and 3-way SLI, a pair of PCIE x1 slots and 2 PCI slots. Storage options are an ultra DMA and six SATA 3Gb/s ports. Dual gigabit LAN controllers are built-in as well.

The on-board sound solution for the board is via a SupremeFX II audio riser card that slips into one of the PCIE x1 slots on the board. The card uses ADI 1988B 8-channel High Definition codec and has Coaxial and S/PDIF out.

Rear panel IO ports include PS/2 keyboard, one optical and one S/PDIF, dual LAN ports, dual eSATA ports, six USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port and an external switch to clear the CMOS. That CMOS switch is great for overclockers. The board uses an ATX form factor and measures 12” x 9.6” in size.

The cooling system used by Asus for the board chipsets is very interesting and is called the Fusion Block system. The blocks are made from copper and the main chipset is designed for use with liquid cooling if you desire. The board also features built-in voltmeter LEDs that display voltage risk notifications at a glance. The Republic of Gamers Asus Striker II NSE also includes a LCD that can be mounted outside the case to display error codes in an easy to understand format.

Layout and Use
The board is laid out pretty well and still gives access to expansion slots when using dual slot video cards. If you are running SLI or 3-way SLI and using the onboard sound riser card you will be short on expansion. Overclockers commonly spend more time than they want moving jumpers to reset CMOS when things get unstable. The real panel mounted reset switch on the Asus Striker II NSE is a god send for these types of users and one press will have you back on your way.

The BIOS used on the board is easy enough to use and offers easy access to CPU level up automatic overclocking and memory level up. All the settings the overclocker needs are on one tab for easy access. The voltage tweaking section is robust and even changes the color of the voltage based on how dangerous the BIOS deems the settings from green, to yellow and red. At least if you fry your rig from too much voltage you can’t say you didn’t know it was dangerous.

Overclockers aren’t the only group that will get benefit out of the Asus Striker II NSE. The automated overclocking of the Asus Striker II NSE works very well. I put the automated overclocking features for my QX9770 CPU and DDR3 RAM to their max levels and the system happily ran without any issues. Here at I4U we really don’t get into hard core overclocking and tons of benchmarks.

However, realizing that some users are heavily into overclocking I will give some numbers I found online from Overclock3D.net when they reviewed the same board with an Intel Q6600. Their CPU on the Asus Striker II NSE was able to run with a FSB frequency of 490 MHz pushing things to the absolute limits. If you want lots of hardcore overclocking information their review will be right up your alley.