ASUS Blitz Extreme

Moving to the expansion slot area there is the slot for the ASUS SupremeFX II riser card, two PCI, two PCI Express x1, and two PCI Express x16 slots. The two PCI Express x16 slots are separated by the two PCI-E x1 slots, which is great for ensuring adequate cooling between these slots as the ASUS Blitz Extreme does support ATI's CrossFire Technology. Unfortunately, at this time ATI/AMD does not support MultiGPU CrossFire under Linux. The CrossLinx Technology on this motherboard is designed to reduce bottlenecks when it comes to using dual graphics cards with allocating dual PCI-E x8 lanes. At the bottom of the expansion slot area is the IEEE-1394a Firewire header.

North on the motherboard is the Intel P35 Chipset. While the P35 is going to jump back a seat for Intel's X38 Chipset, it is currently their high-end desktop chipset that supports dual-core and quad-core processors as well as DDR2 or DDR3 (ASUS went with DDR3 for this Republic of Gamers motherboard) and the PCI Express x16 graphics capabilities. The P35 is ASUS' central point in their Fusion Block System. The ASUS Fusion Block System is meant to cool all of the key points on the motherboard and if you want to take the cooling even a step further, a water cooling system can be put in the loop. This hybrid thermal cooler can be optionally fed water to provide the ultimate cooling capabilities, and is also why ASUS had included some water cooling accessories with the motherboard. The two included fans can be installed on the Fusion Block System if you are using a water cooling system.

Back at the top of the motherboard there is the LGA-775 socket. The Blitz Extreme supports all Intel LGA-775 processors up to the Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme. The motherboard also supports 45nm Penryn processors (permitting you have the latest BIOS). There are heatsinks at the end of the Fusion Block System over the VRM at the I/O port area and an additional copper heatsink at the top edge of the motherboard, but the CPU socket area is free of any major obstructions that could cause problems with some after-market cooling configurations. In the upper left hand corner of the motherboard is the 8-pin ATX12V power connector. Some of the other features for the ASUS Blitz Extreme include 8 phase DrMOS power, load-line calibration, COP EX, Stack Cool 2, and Voltiminder LEDs for showing the voltage status of key components.

Some of the ASICs scattered around this motherboard include the VIA VT6308P IEEE-1934a Firewire, Marvell 88E8001-LKJ1, J-Micron JMB363, Winbond W836270H6 I/O, and a Marvell Yukon 88E8056-NNC1 Gigabit controller. It is also important to note that with the Blitz Extreme, ASUS had used all high quality solid-state capacitors. At the rear of the motherboard are a PS/2 keyboard port, one optical and coaxial S/PDIF output, two external SATA (eSATA), two Gigabit ethernet, six USB 2.0, one IEEE-1394a Firewire, and one clear CMOS switch. This clear CMOS switch is especially handy if you're using the motherboard inside a computer case (like most people) and this saves from having to open up the chassis and clearing the CMOS via the header as now you can clear the CMOS from the rear of the computer. The ASUS SupremeFX II provides the rest of the audio ports.