Overall, P5Q3 has a decent layout. No bulky components, odd placements of the connectors or such. The SATA ports are angled where there's a chance long graphics cards will be in the way for a regular up-right SATA connector. The internal connections are gathered in the lower portion of the board and the ATX feed and floppy connectors are placed in the top right corner. As you can see, the rear connectors are organized as we would expect and the two lower jacks are antenna connectors for the wireless network interface.

The cooling is sturdy, but not exaggerated. Heatpipe cooling for the southbridge is unnecessary in most cases, but it doesn't intrude in this case. Further more, the board has dual heatpipes for removing the heat from the northbridge. The heatsinks on the MOSFET transistors are screwed in place instead of held down by regular push-pins, which gives a much better impression, pressure and heat deduction.

Here we have an overview of the power circuitry for the processor and memory. The processor has a 16-phase power supply, which is twice the capacity of previous ASUS boards. The number of phases is in no way an indication of performance, but it suggests a rigorous design. What's even more unusual are the two 3-phase power supplies for both memory and northbridge, which also suggests stable voltages for both of them.

Now that the board has been presented, it's time to take a look at the other components of the test system.