Asustek's P5E64 WS Evolution: Intel's X48 PCI-Express Lanes Don't Add Up

Intel's X48 chipsets are starting to pop out in more and more motherboard configurations, as we have previously reported during the CeBIT show. Asustek has also paper-introduced another X48 offering in its WS series of motherboards, namely the "Evolution".

The new motherboard comes with four PCI-Express x16 slots, a single PCI-Express x4 and two regular PCI expansion slots. The bad news is, despite the fact that the motherboard comes with 4 x16 PCI-Express slots, two of them can only deliver x4 speeds. Summing things up, we could easily claim that we can still use 40 PCI-Express lanes upon our will, yet that seems not to agree with Intel's X48 specifications.

As you probably know, Intel's X48 chipset comes with a total of 38 PCI-Express lanes, which means that Asustek's motherboard could not possibly take advantage of two x16 and two x4 PCIe slots. It seems that the manufacturer has implemented another PCI-Express bridge chip right next to the ICH, but it's less visible because of the huge heatsink placed above it. In fact, this approach is old news to Asustek, and the additional PCI-Express bridge chip has been previously implemented into other of its motherboard offerings.

The P5E64 WS Evolution is similar to another model in the WS family, the P5E64 WS Professional, except for the fact that it was built around the older Intel X38 chipset. Asustek performed some adjustments to the heatpipe cooling system as well as to the color of the memory slots in order to gain in aesthetics.

According to the product's specifications sheet, the board is more than 95 percent power efficient when it faces light workloads, and more than 90 percent when it operates at full capacity. Unlike Gigabyte's products, the P5E64 WS Evolution won't require the user to install additional software in order to enjoy lower power consumption levels.