ASUS Striker II NSE motherboard review

When NVIDIA's nForce 790i chipset launched a few weeks ago, we took a look at ASUS' Striker II Extreme motherboard and were mightily impressed.  Although you couldn't really call it a complete revolution over the 780i chipset that came before, we saw much-improved performance in places and some nice little feature set additions that came with the new part.  However, there was one very large sticking point with the board - Price.  At around £285 including VAT in the UK its retail price was extortionately expensive, especially once you factor in coupling the motherboard with DDR3 memory, which is still far more expensive than the bargain DDR2 prices currently doing the rounds.

Following on from our thoughts about the Striker II Extreme, today we take a look at the Striker II NSE, which features the nForce 790i SLI chipset without its additional 'Ultra' moniker while still maintaining ASUS' Republic of Gamers brand.  More importantly however, this means that this motherboard retails at a much lower price point, although it does of course retain the use of DDR3 memory modules.  So, just what is different between the Striker II NSE and the Extreme, and will this part prove to be even more worthy of your cash?  Let's investigate.