Intel P55 chipset is a single-chip solution. The basic features provided by this chipset include six SATA-300 ports (RAID support is optional), no support for parallel ATA (PATA) ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports supporting port disable, embedded Gigabit Ethernet MAC (Medium Access Control) and eight x1 PCI Express lanes.

ASUS P7P55D PRO provides all the six SATA-300 ports with support for Intel Matrix Storage, which provides RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The motherboard also has one extra SATA-300 port, one eSATA-300 port and one ATA-133 port controlled by a JMicron JMB363 chip. The eSATA port present on this motherboard supports port multiplier up to four devices, i.e., you can install up to four drives there, limited by the number of drives your external HDD enclosure supports, of course. RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD are supported on the ports controlled by this extra chip from JMicron, so if you have an external HDD enclosure supporting port multiplier you can create a RAID array with the drives installed in your enclosure.

Four of the SATA connectors are placed facing the motherboard edge while the others are placed near the left edge of the motherboard, as you can see in Figure 8. This is a terrific solution, because on motherboards where the ports are facing up the video cards usually block the access to them or even completely prevent you from installing SATA cables on them.

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Figure 8: SATA ports.

No floppy disk drive controller is present.

This motherboard has all the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset, eight soldered on the rear panel and six available through three motherboard headers. Additionally ASUS P7P55D PRO comes with a FireWire (IEEE 1394) controller, providing two FireWire ports, one soldered on the rear panel and one available a header. The motherboard comes with an I/O bracket containing two USB ports and one FireWire port.

Audio is generated by the chipset using a VIA VT1828S codec, which is a professional-grade component, providing 7.1 audio with 24-bit resolution, 110 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the outputs, 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs and 192 kHz sampling rate for both the outputs and inputs. This motherboard comes with on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs. The board also has an SPDIF out header, which may be used to connect the SPDIF output to your video card, if it has an HDMI connector in order for you to have HDMI with digital audio over a single cable. As you can see in Figure 9, this motherboard has independent analog outputs for all eight channels. With these specs you work professionally with audio editing and mixing without the need of a high-end (and expensive) add-on sound card.

ASUS P7P55D PRO has a Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by a Realtek RTL8112L chip.

In Figure 9, you can see the motherboard rear panel with PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, eight USB 2.0 ports, coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs, FireWire port, eSATA port, Gigabit Ethernet port and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

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Figure 9: Motherboard rear panel.

ASUS P7P55D PRO also has a serial port, available through a header on the motherboard. The board, however, doesn’t come with the connector required to use it.