ASUS Striker II NSE Motherboard Review

Bundle and BIOS

Asus designed a great box for the Striker II NSE. It is attractive and catchy, compared to the gaudy and overly busy designs that we have seen on other boxes. They make a big deal about including the full game of Company of Heroes – Opposing Fronts in the box. To me, it is a big deal, as it is very rare to find good games bundled with motherboards or graphics cards these days.

This is one heck of a bundle that is included. There is so much there that they almost needed another box to hold it all. You have your Fusion block accessories, the DIY pedestal (also known as rubber feet!), the LCD poster, optional fans to use on the board, the SupremeFX audio card, a 3-way SLI bridge, the 3-in-1 Asus Q-connector kit, SATA, IDE and floppy cables, SATA power cables, a USB firewire header, the backplate, thermal sensor cables, cable ties, a user manual and the driver and apps CD. That is quite a bundle!

I love the fact that Asus customizes the BIOS to open up to the Extreme Tweaker page over the Main page. That gives you another clue as to who will be using this board. This is the area of the BIOS that all tweakers will salivate over, and spend most of their time in. You will want to set the Overclock Tuner to manual so you tweak to the fullest!

One of the settings I love the most on the NVIDIA boards is this one. I love being able to lock the memory down at a frequency while overclocking the CPU. It is a great setting!

FSB can be set all the way to 3000 (/4=750). That is way more than enough.

Memory can also be set all the way to 3000… also a very good setting! More than enough room to work with.

Memory timings that can be set…

CPU vcore can be set to 2.4v. That is VERY high, so be careful!

Loadline Calibration…

CPU PLL goes to 3.0v.

CPU VTT goes to 2.46v.

Memory vDimm goes to 3.1v. This is an awesome number to have available.

North bridge voltage goes to 2.2v.

South Bridge voltage goes to 1.85v.

The CPU Configuration page.

The Main page that isn’t really the Main page! It is the second page!

The Advanced page is where we find a few more of the goodies in the BIOS like AI Net and the controls for the LCD poster and the lighting on the board, pictured below.

Onboard Devices page…

The Hardware Monitor page allows you to monitor the vitals of your system, like the temps…

and the voltages…

Boot Settings page…

The Tools page is where we find the OC Profile that allows you save overclock settings to recall at any time. The EZ flash is also here, and is one of the easiest ways to flash a BIOS that I have seen.

Let’s go ahead and move on!