Today the HEXUS.labs was infiltrated by a Commando... the ASUS Commando.
Once HEXUS.staff were able to reconnoitre the area, the infiltrator was discovered, ready for unboxing. So, we opened it up and had a look.
Interrogation suggests that HEXUS was the Commando's first target... so we can show you, for the first time, the ASUS Commando out in the wild, doing some covert wet work.
So what makes this board so special that ASUS gave it such an elite title? Well, it's designed to support system bus speeds up to 2280MHz (that's right), along with memory clocks of up to 1300MHz. Lap that up, why don't ya!
The P965 chipset and board VRM cooling is handled through heatpipes and "blowoff" from the CPU's HSF, as seen on a number of high-end boards these days.
The expansion slot arrangement should allow for a couple of PCI cards and an extra PCIe card to be slotted in around even fat-arse graphics cards.
Look familiar? The LCD panel has been seen on previous boards from ASUS, like the ASUS Crosshair we reviewed in an AM2 duel in September. The ASUS Commando is, much like the Crosshair, a Republic of Gamers board. That's ASUS's way of saying they've designed and branded it for gamers, who like powerful hardware and tweakability. It's got power, reset and clear CMOS buttons on the PCB too... very handy for people who like fooling around with their hardware.
With Core2Quad support and the aforementioned 'insane in the mainframe' max clocks, it could be a fun board to play with. We'll let you know what we think once we've finished a more intensive interrogation (well, more likely torture) session.
Meanwhile, more details can be found on the ASUS website.
