ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe main features are:

• Socket: AM2+.
• Chipset: NVIDIA nForce 780a.
• Super I/O: ITE 8716F
• Parallel IDE: One ATA-133 port controlled by the south bridge chip.
• Serial IDE: Six SATA-300 ports, controlled by the south bridge chip, supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD and two one eSATA-300 port controlled by a Marvell 88SE6111 chip.
• USB: Ten USB 2.0 ports (four soldered on the motherboard and six available through I/O brackets; this board comes with an I/O bracket containing two ports, thus four ports are left over and should be used by the case frontal USB ports).
• FireWire (IEEE 1394a): Two ports controlled by an LSI L-FW3227 chip, available through I/O brackets. The I/O bracket that comes with the motherboard has only one port, so one port is left over and should be used by the case frontal FireWire port.
• On-board audio: Produced by the chipset together with Analog Devices AD1988B codec (eight channels, 24-bit resolution, up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, 92 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the inputs and 101 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the outputs).
• On-board video: Yes, with two independent outputs, one VGA and the other HDMI.
• On-board LAN: One Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by the chipset with an Atheros Attansic F1 chip making the physical layer interface.
• Buzzer: No.
• Power supply required: ATX12V 2.x (24-pin), EPS12V optional.
• Slots: Three x16 PCI Express 2.0 slots supporting SLI (working at x16 if one or two cards are installed; at x8 if three cards are installed), one PCI Express x1 slot and two PCI slots.
• Memory: Four DDR-DIMM sockets (up to 8 GB up to DDR2-800/PC2-6400 or DDR2-1066/PC2-8500, depending on the CPU).
• Number of CDs that come with this motherboard: One DVD-ROM.
• Programs included: Motherboard drivers and utilities.
• Extra features: Passive cooling for the memories, passive cooling for the motherboard, aluminum solid capacitors, Q-Connectors for the case frontal connectors and Express Gate (web browsing and Skype without entering the operating system or even without a hard disk drive attached).
• More Information: http://www.asus.com
• Average price in the US: This product wasn’t released yet on the day we published this First Look article.