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Page 3 of 8 - ASUS Striker II NSE motherboard
ASUS Striker II NSE motherboard
We've already established that there isn't a great deal of difference in specification between the Striker II NSE and the Extreme, but how about with regard to looks and layout? Let me give you a clue to save you some time - The layout and functionality of the NSE remains identical, those high memory clock speeds the Extreme is capable of aside.
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As per the Striker II Extreme, the NSE closely follows the design originally established by the nForce 780i-based Striker II Formula, with ASUS' Fusion cooling block added to the mix as we mentioned earlier to allow for water cooling of the chipset if you so desire.
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The backplate of the Striker II Extreme features the usual kind of goodies on show from a Republic of Gamers motherboard. We find ourselves with a PS/2 keyboard connector (no PS/2 mouse support here!), six USB 2.0 ports, coaxial and optical audio outputs, a CMOS reset button, a single Firewire port and two Gigabit RJ-45 network outputs. The one difference here over the Striker II Formula (and something that had been flagged as missing by our forum members in the review of that products) is the inclusion of two eSATA connectors, which is a cut above the single port found on many boards, and thus adds yet more to the already rich feature set.
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As we've already discussed, the Striker II NSE support speeds of up to 1333MHz compared to the massive 2000MHz clock speed supported by the Striker II Extreme.
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The arrangement of PCI and PCI Express slots is as per the Striker II Formula and Extreme, with the two PCI Express 2.0-capable 16x slots marked in blue and the PCI Express 1.1 16x slot in white. That aside, the board also features two PCI Express 1x slots (one marked brown for the board's SupremeFX audio card), and a couple of standard PCI slots.
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Six internal Serial ATA ports are provided together with a single parallel ATA channel supporting two devices.
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As per other Republic of Gamers motherboards, ASUS' Striker II uses the PCI Express 1x SupremeFX II audio board to provide sound capabilities, which leverages Analog Devices 1988B chip for its processing capabilities.
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The Firewire support we saw on the Striker II Extreme's backplate is provided by VIA's VT6308P chip.
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Finally, the two Gigabit NICs on this motherboard are powered by Marvell's 88E1116 chip.
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