Asus P5M2-E/4L Mainboard

There are three basic hardware components in every computer that can make or break a good and performant system, namely the processor, the mainboard and the system's memory. The mainboard is pretty much overlooked by most computer users when shopping for a new system, but is it the mainboard that links all hardware components together, creating the computer system as a whole.

The hardware manufacturing company Asus takes motherboards seriously and their latest model of server intended mainboard is a perfect example. The P5M2-E/4L mainboard, dubbed serverboard, is designed to accommodate the fast growing requirements for mass storage and fact networking of small and medium businesses and applications. The P5M2-E/4L comes with a Quad-LAN networking solution that simply integrates four high speed Gigabit LAN ports into a single one, provides almost four times the transferring bandwidth, and a perfect solution for achieving a high network speed that helps sharing information and transferring data. According to the Asus press release concerning the P5M2-E/4L serverboard, "strict networking performance tests have shown that the Quad-LAN of the P5M2-E/4L can improve transferring performances up to 390% in comparison to a single LAN. Additionally, the four ports can also be used in individual sub-nets to provide secure data and smoother transfers."

Another requirement of most businesses and enterprises, apart from a stable and high speed capable motherboard, is the presence of a hardware component that can handle a large number of hard disk drives and optical drives too in order to ensure a scalable, high performance mass storage solution. P5M2-E/4L has 8 SATA ports arranged into two sets backed up by separate controllers for increased performance. This solution was then doubled with Quad-SATA RAID protection.

"Besides the above features, users are also provided with various benefits, including compatibility with most server class expansion cards, memory, hard disks and so on," says Judy Lin, Product Manager of ASUS' Server BU. "The ASUS SmartFan2 technology can adjust fan speeds intelligently, giving consideration to both system cooling and acoustic noise control, while the four-phase power supply implementation and the strict environmental test criteria including temperature, voltage and humidity validation, will assure the system board working with high reliability and durability". "The two sets of SATA ports are shown in different colors so that the users will not mix up the disk arrays; and the OS and users' data can be stored under different RAID to get doubled protection."