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Asus launches another workstation motherboard

by on11 March 2008
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X48 chipset, claims 95% power efficiency

Asus has launched yet another motherboard in its WS series of products, this time based on Intel's X48 chipset. The P5E64 WS Evolution, as the board is called, offers no less than four x16 PCIe slots as well as a x4 PCIe slot and two PCI slots. However, two of the x16 slots are limited to x4 bandwidth, but it still doesn't seem to add up, as the X48 chipset only has a total of 38 PCIe lanes.

It appears as if the board has some kind of additional chip on it next to the ICH, as the ICH is covered by a very large heatsink and this could very well be another PCIe bridge chip as we've seen before from Asus. We're not quite sure why Asus thinks this board qualifies as a workstation board, as it doesn't look that different apart from the x4 PCIe slot to many of its motherboards.

The board actually appears to be more or less identical to the P5E64 WS Professional, although this board uses the X38 chipset. However, the color of the memory slots and heatpipe cooling has changed and made the board look a lot more uniform.

We have to wonder about Asus' claims with regards to power efficiency though, as it states that the board is 95 percent plus power efficient during light load scenarios and 90 percent plus during heavy/full load. Asus is also taking a dig at Gigabyte on the product page, saying that its HE 95 (HE for High Efficiency) doesn't require any software or drivers to work and that it will automatically save power for the user. We'll reserve our judgement until it's been tested, but it sounds like Asus is making some pretty wild claims here.

You can find the product page here
Last modified on 11 March 2008
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