New Asus mobo offers power-saving features

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net IN THIS day and age of high power costs, computer enthusiasts are becoming incr easingly aware that their hobby of building computers might affect their power consumption. Some hardware manufacturers are already integrating power-saving f eatures in their products, such as Intel's latest processors and some hard disk models. Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Asustek takes it a bit farther with what it cal ls the first ever motherboard that has an integrated power-saving feature. The P5Q motherboard series has been integrated with a specialized southbridge chip called the energy processing unit (EPU-6), which the company claims to have a p ower-saving level of 80.23 percent and utilizes up to 96 percent of energy cons umed. Asus claims the P5Q can also manage the power consumption of the processors, ha rd disk and graphics cards installed on it. According to Asus Southeast sales a ccount specialist Steven Cokeng, the motherboard EPU setting runs automatically but can be adjusted through the system BIOS. Nevertheless, Cokeng said the motherboard has been optimized for overclockers a s the P5Q features the P45 Intel chipset, which could accommodate up to Intel C ore 2 Quad processors, supporting up to 1600 megahertz front side bus. It can b e installed with up to 16 Gigabytes of DDR2 memory from 667 megahertz to 1200 M Hz. It also features up three PCIex16 slots (for the higher version P5Q-E model ). Some notable overclocking features of the P5Q include 64-step DRAM voltage cont rol, and adjustable CPU voltage at 0.000625V increments, and a 48-step chipset voltage control. Cokeng also said that along with the power-saving features and the overclocking capabilities the P5Q also has its own quiet heat protection solution in the fo rm of specially-designed pure copper heat pipes running along the edge of the m ain processor slot, the northbridge chipset and the southbridge chipset. Another feature in the P5Q is a small solid state hard disk installed in the mo therboard, which acts as its primary operating system if it has no other operat ing system installed. The Asus Express Gate has a light Linux kernel that has s mall applications, such as an Internet browser, a voice-over-IP application and email software. Likewise, it can view photo and video files and play music fil es. Its Web browser can access video sites such as YouTube. Cokeng claims the Express Gate has a 5-second startup, making it one of fastest load time for an operating system. Those not looking to install a full operati ng system and just want their PCs for basic uses can alternatively use the Expr ess Gate for their needs. "The P5Q's EPU and the Express Gate are just two of the things that will have a future in later motherboards," Cokeng said.