Product on Review: ASUS Sabertooth P67
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ASUS
SRP: £170 Inc. VAT
Street Price: £169.99 Inc. VAT



Sandy Bridge is now upon us and Intel has already had overwhelming success with this new platform since its release just last week. Consumers can finally get their hands on the new processors and new motherboards.

Arriving a little later than the plethora of Sandy Bridge boards now available to the consumer is the ASUS Sabertooth P67. The Sabertooth is taken from ASUS' new TUF (The Ultimate Force) series which is specifically designed for the professional that is looking for a robust and fearless design. It may have some cut-down features that you would typically find on a RoG motherboard but it still has a rich feature-set that is going to attract a lot of attention. The design is like no other, and its going to divide people into the 'love it, or hate it' camps... the term used so often today "its like marmite you either love it or hate it" springs to mind.

The Sabertooth P67 we are going to take a look at today comes with the exciting new ASUS EFI BIOS which is streamlined to make tweaking your setup that bit easier but the significant feature that will be on most peoples mind when you mention Sabertooth P67 is the Thermal Armour that this board arrives with. This plastic shroud has dual purpose behind it, to protect the components and to aid cooling efficiency, or so ASUS claim. The design of the Sabertooth P67 is sure to make it stand out from amongst the other boards on the market, no-one else has come up with a design like it. Today we will be revealing whether this 'Thermal Vest' really does deliver what it claims.



ASUS Take:


Specifications (Click here for a full list of the Sabertooth P67 exclusive features)

CPU
- Intel® Socket 1155 for Intel® 2nd Generation Core™ i7 Processor/Core™ i5 Processor/Core™ i3 Processor/
- Support Intel® 32nm CPU
- Supports Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0
Chipset
- Intel® P67 Express Chipset
Memory
- 4 x DIMM, Max. 32 GB, DDR3 1866/1800/1600/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
- Dual Channel memory architecture
- Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)
Expansion Slots
- 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (single at x16 or dual at x8/x8 mode)
- 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
- 1 x PCI
Multi-GPU Support
- Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
- Supports ATI® Quad-GPU CrossFireX™ Technology
Storage
- Intel® P67 Express Chipset
- 2 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (brown)
- 4 xSATA 3Gb/s ports (black)
- Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10
- Marvell® PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller
- 2 xSATA 6Gb/s ports (gray)
- JMicron® JMB362 SATA controller
- 1 xPower eSATA 3Gb/s port (green)
- 1 xExternal SATA 3Gb/s port (red)
LAN
- Intel® 82579 Gigabit LAN- Dual interconnect between the Integrated LAN controller and Physical Layer (PHY)
Audio
- Realtek® ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
- Absolute Pitch 192khz/24bit True BD Lossless Sound
- BD Audio Layer Content Protection
- Supports Jack-Detection, Multi-streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking
- Optical S/PDIF out port at back I/O
IEEE 1394
- VIA® VT6308P controller supports 2 x 1394a port(s) (one at mid-board; one at back panel)
USB
- NEC USB 3.0 controllers
- 4 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (2 ports at mid-board for front panel support; 2 ports at back panel [blue])
- Intel® P67 Express Chipset
- 14 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 8 ports at back panel)
Exclusive TUF Features
"Ultimate COOL!" Thermal Solution
- TUF Thermal Armor
- TUF Thermal Radar
"TUF ENGINE!" Power Design
- 8+2 Digital Phase Power Design
- TUF Components (Alloy choke, Cap. & MOSFET; certified by military-standard)
- ASUS DIGI+ VRM Utility
- E.S.P. : Efficient Switching Power Design
"Safe & Stable!" Guardian Angel
- ESD Guards
- MemOK!
- Anti Surge

Other Special Features
- Front Panel USB 3.0 Support
- ASUS EFI BIOS EZ Mode featuring friendly graphics user interface
- AI Suite II
- ASUS Q-Connector
- ASUS Q-Shield
- ASUS Q-LED (CPU, DRAM, VGA, Boot Device LED)
- ASUS Q-Slot
- ASUS Q-DIMM
- ASUS O.C. Profile
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
- ASUS EZ Flash 2
- ASUS MyLogo 2
- Multi-language BIOS
Back Panel I/O Ports
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse Combo port
- 1 x External SATA 3Gb/s port (red)
- 1 x Power eSATA 3Gb/s port (green)
- 1 x IEEE 1394a
- 1 x LAN(RJ45) port(s)
- 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (blue)
- 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical)
- 8 -Channel Audio I/O
Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 x USB 3.0/2.0 connector(s) supports additional 2 USB ports (19-pin; moss green)
- 3 x USB 2.0/1.1 connector(s) support additional 6 USB ports
- 1 x MemOK! button
- 4 x SATA 6.0Gb/s connectors ( 2 x gray; 2 x brown)
- 4 x SATA 3.0Gb/s (black)
- 1 x IEEE 1394a connector
- 1 x CPU Fan connector(s) (4-pin)
- 2 x Chassis Fan connector(s) (1 x 4-pin; 1 x 3-pin)
- 1 x Power Fan connector(s) (3-pin)
- 1 x Assistant Fan connector (3-pin)
- 1 x S/PDIF Out connector
- 24-pin EATX Power connector
- 8-pin EATX 12V Power connector
- 1 x Front panel audio connector
- 1 x COM connector
- 1 x System Panel (Q-Connector)
- 1 x Clear CMOS jumper
BIOS
- 32 Mb Flash ROM , EFI AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
Manageability
- WfM 2.0,DMI 2.0,WOL by PME,WOR by PME,PXE
Accessories
- User's manual
- 2 x SATA 3.0Gb/s cables
- 2 x SATA 6.0Gb/s cables
- 1 x Q-Shield
- 1 x Q-Connecor (2 in 1)
- 1 x ASUS SLI bridge cable
- 1 x TUF Certification card
- 1 x TUF 5 Year Warranty manual (by region)
- 4 x screws for Assistant Fan
Support Disc
- Drivers
- Anti-virus software (OEM version)
- ASUS Update
- ASUS Utilities
Form Factor
- ATX Form Factor
- 12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )