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Published: Apr 18, 2008 Author: Niko Lupala Editor: Amber Lupala Provider: Asus Share this article:

Introduction

DDR2 ram doesn't cost anything these days so if you are going for a upgrade maybe you should look at this Striker 2 formula that we are going to review today and get a good setup of DDR2.
Yes todays review will consist of a review on the Striker 2 board that has gotten quite good results in earlier tests. This board is aiming for the overclockers and most fetures revolve around that theme today. We are going to compare it vs a couple of well performing DDR2 board though to see how it performs at stock. Of course we will finish this review with some overclocking results to actually see if this board lives up to its name.

About Asus:

Check out their website.

Features:

Check out the website for full specifications and features.

The product:<

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This board has to many features to list in one review, I'm guessing it would fill a couple of pages so go ahead and click on the link to look at them.
The board comes packed in a very nice box and as with most Asus products right now you get a copy of Compay of Heroes as seen on the box. Inside you will find alot of various cables, adapters and cards. For example you get three SATA cables, one IDE, one floppy, SATA power adapter and even USB 2 connectors.

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The manual that is included is quite good I have to admit, it brings up most important features. You also get the Company of Heroes and a cd with drivers and Asus software that can be used with the board. Included also is a SLI bridge and a display that is connected to the board, this display will show errors codes in case you got some errors.

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Along with the I/O plate you get two optional fans that you can mount on the board to keep the stability.
The PCB is black and along with the copper heatsinks the color scheme of this board is excellent, it looks very luxurious and good.

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Around the cpu socket they have mounted heatsinks but it still does not stop you from mounting a big cpu cooler on the board. If you look at the right picture you will see a big heatsink and this actually lights up when the board is powered up.

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The memory sockets are marked with white and blue, apparently to the overclocking guide the blue ones clock better than the white ones, this reamins to be seen though.
This board supports two IDE drives as it only has one IDE slot, you get six SATA connectors though so there is plenty of support for your HDD´s.

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This board does not have HDMI which suprises me a big but you get the most needed plugins like, dual LAN, 6 USB ports, Firewire SPDIF etc. You might have noticed there is no sound card on the board, this is a external card that you mount on.