The Asus M4A89TD Pro was built with an AMD 890FX chipset but targeted to the more affordable category. The board can handle four (4) DIMMs of DDR3 RAM (1066MHz and 1333MHz clock speed) for a maximum of 16GB total memory capacity.

Asus M4A89TD Pro
AMD 890FX chipset
AMD SB850 Southbridge
4 x 4GB RAM support (16GB max)

There are quite a number of AMD CPUs you can use with this board. For the Athlon II, you’ve got the X2 (250u to 245e and the 260), X3 (415e @ 2.4GHz up to the 445 @ 3.1GHz) and the X4 (600e @ 2.2Ghz to the 640 @ 3.0GHz). With the Phenom II, it starts with the 910e running at 2.6GHz up to the 965 running at 3.4GHz.

The mobo has a conservatively good amount of ports and expansion slots:

• 2 x 16x PCI-Express 2.0 slots (x16/x16) with ATI CrossFire-X support
• 1 x 4x PCI-Express 2.0 slot
• 1 x 1x PCI-Express 2.0 slot
• 2 x PCI slots
• 2 x Realtek RTL8111E PCI-Express Gigabit LAN
• 6 x SATA 6Gbps ports from SB850 supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD
• 1 x SATA 3Gbps ports and one IDE port from JMicron JMB361
• 2 x IEEE1394a Firewire ports (one rear I/O, one via pin-out)
• 14 x USB 2 ports (eight rear I/O, six pin-outs)
• Realtek ALC892 7.1 channel w/ coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs

We think that’s more than enough ports to go around.

The Asus M4A89TD Pro motherboard will have a suggested retail price of Php9,790 when it comes out in stores. Not that cheap but ti’s one of the better alternatives you can get to pair with the newer CPU models.

The Asus P7P55D Deluxe will support Intel’s Core i7 and upcoming Core i5 processors (LGA1156 Lynnfield). Based on Intel’s P55 express chipset, the Asus P7P55D can handle 4 DIMM for a maximum of 16GB of DDR3 RAM.

For expansion slots, you get 2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 and 2 PCI slots. For GPU, it can handle ATI Quad-GPU CrossFire Technology and NVidia Quad-GPU SLI. It has 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports supporting SATA Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10; an Ultra DMA for 2 PATA devices and up to 14 USB 2.0 ports as well as 2 IEEE 1394a ports.

(click on images to see larger view)

It also features dual Gigabit LAN controllers from Realtek (first mobo we’ve seen that has 2 LAN ports) as well as a Via VT2020 10-channel (9.1) hidef audio codec.

What’s more impressive about this motherboard is that it features a remote controller (Turbo Key Touch-n-Boost) for users to be able to run the Turbo Mode. This means you can select a pre-configured overclocking profile at a press of a button. This reminds me of the good old days of the 386/486 era with that turbo button.

This is, by far, the only information we can share right now (we don’t even have any price points).

The card is based on the NVidia GT200 and was first released way back in the third quarter of 2008. Built for serious gamers, the Asus ENGTX280 sports a 512-bit DDR3 RAM for bigger processing bandwidth.

The core specs:

Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
Core Clock Speed: 670MHz
Interface: PCI Express 2.0
Video Memory: 1024 MB GDDR3 512-bit
Max Resolution: 2560×1600 pixels (DVI)
Stream Processors: 240

The card has two dual-link DVI ports and a 7-pin HDTV-out port for connecting into hi-def TVs and playing videos. Unlike most other graphic cards, the ENGTX280′s innards are completely encased in metal with only the cooling fan visible from the outside. That added to the heft of the video card.

Be prepared to have a high-capacity PSU as this unit eats up a considerable amount of juice (~300watts). That’s one of the first mistakes I made when testing out this card. A suggested PSU would be the Corsair 650w or the Gigabyte Odin 800 and Odin 1000. Be prepared to shell out some serious dough for those.

The card was pretty expensive when it first came out (above Php20k) although I think it has gone down considerably (around Php12k – Php15k).

Asus boasts that the mobo’s components are 100% Japan-made solid capacitors and supports dual-channel DDR3 1333MHz memory. It’s actually overclock-ready up to 1600MHz. One drawback though si that it’s not backward compatible so you can’t use DDR2 RAM modules. Not to worry though since DDR3 RAM is becoming cheaper nowadays.

Supported CPUs include Phenom II X3 710/720, Phenom II X4 805/801 and the high-end quad-cores Phenom II X4 910/925/945/955, the fastest being a 3.2GHz quad-core X4 955.

The board’s construction is quite impressive, with 4 slots for the RAM, 12 USB 2.0 ports, Firewire 1394a, 4 PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, Gigabit LAN, 7.1 channel audio, and sports a copper-mesh passive cooler for the AMD 790FX chipset including a heatpipe that crosses thru the southbridge. There’s no integrated ATI graphics here since this is the top of the line so you’re expected to pair it with the best ATI Radeon GPU or use ATI CrossFireX technology.

Comes with the Asus TurboV, a tool allows you to overclock the CPU without exiting or rebooting the OS. That coupled with the Turbo Key allows you to boost CPU performance at a press of a button.

This board is still very new may still be very rare to find in the local market. We’re unsure how much the final price will be but it could be north of Php10,000. Not a lot for what it can offer.