ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe WiFi+TV
Providing the onboard wired networking needs is the Marvell 88E8053 Yukon Gigabit ethernet controller. Unfortunately, the P5LD2 Deluxe does not have dual LAN controllers. Covering the Intel i945P Northbridge is a fairly large aluminum passive heatsink. To the left of the Northbridge are two 3-pin fan connectors as well as a secondary SATA controller. This Silicon Image 3132R SATA Link controller provides one SATA 2 connector near the CPU socket area as well as a second SATA connector on the I/O panel. This SATA connector is for ASUS's SATA on the Go to allow for some external high-speed data capabilities. These two SATA ports provided by the SATA Link controller are SATA 2.0 compliant as well as offering RAID capabilities.
Looking around the motherboard's CPU socket area, it wasn't as clear of obstructions as other LGA-775 solutions but most users with moderately or large sized heatsinks should have no mounting problems. The CPU socket supports 1066/800/533MHz FSB processors and is Pentium D dual-core ready. Behind the CPU socket area is another passive heatsink to assist in cooling the power regulation and helping in the ASUS Stack Cool 2 design. In the upper left hand corner of the motherboard is the EATX12V 8-pin power connector but is backwards compatible with a 4-pin P4 connector.
At the rear of the motherboard on the I/O panel is one parallel port, one IEEE-1394a port, one 10/100/1000 LAN port, four USB 2.0 ports, one SATA port, one optical S/PDIF out port, one coaxial S/PDIF out port, two PS/2 ports (keyboard/mouse), and the 8-channel audio ports. As we had also previously discusses the P5LD2 is among the few motherboards at the time which offer an external SATA port on the I/O panel and it can potentially be quite handy in some situations. Unfortunately, ASUS has yet to take the leap forward like Abit and Sapphire to begin eliminating the legacy ports on the I/O panel. Overall, the ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe WiFi+TV Edition motherboard is relatively well laid out with no obvious signs of causing problems during installation. The amount of additional features for this motherboard compared to other i945 motherboards is very enticing but it will be interesting to see just how well this motherboard can perform.