Here's our ASUS P55 motherboard of the day: the P7P55D Premium. Positioned in the high-end segment of socket LGA-1156 motherboards, this board boasts of support for SATA III 6 Gbps. Associated with the SATA III controller, is also an interesting feature. To begin with, the CPU is powered by a digital PWM circuit with "32+3" phases. Sure there are that many chokes, but we do suspect choke redundancy here. The CPU is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots to support dual-channel memory.

Unlike the P7P55D Deluxe, this board makes do with two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, each of which arrange to 8-lanes PCI-E when both are populated. Other expansion slots include two PCI-E x1 and two PCI. Connectivity options include two gigabit Ethernet controllers, 8 channel audio, and a number of USB and Firewire ports. From the looks of it, there's also a place-holder for the NEC µPD720200 USB 3.0 controller, and its marked blue-coloured USB ports, though it's MIA.The P55 PCH provides six SATA II ports, and an additional Marvell 88SE9123 controller gives out two next-generation SATA III ports. ASUS used an interesting (and expensive) method of making sure the controller works to its full potential. A PCI-Express 2.0 switch was added to the board, that connects to all the four PCI-E 1.1 lanes the P55 PCH provides, and gives out 12 PCI-E 2.0 lanes, with support for three ports in all. One of these ports, configured as PCI-E 2.0 x1, connects to the Marvell 88SE9123 (which is a PCI-E 2.0 x1 device) to make sure it is provided with a 500 MB/s interconnect, reducing its bottleneck compared to most other motherboards that simply connect one of the four PCI-E 1.1 lanes from the PCH to it. We think the two PCI-E x1 slots make for the rest of the PLX PCI-E switch's two ports. It is believed that the P7P55D Premium will launch in the next couple of months, if not being part of the first LGA-1156 boards from ASUS.