The Asus Striker II Extreme would cost you around 328~370 Euro (+shipping)

The retail package is quickly identified as a "Republic of Gamers" series of motherboards. It also includes the "Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts" game.

Not much to say here, inside the box you will find the usual cables and of course, the 3-way SLI bridge connector.

Below is a list of what's included in the retail package

• LCD Poster
• ASUS Optional Fan
• SupremeFX II Audio Card
• 3 in 1 ASUS Q-Connector Kit
• UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
• Floppy disk drive cable
• 3-way SLI bridge
• ASUS SLI bridge
• SATA cables
• SATA power cables
• 2-port USB2.0 + IEEE 1394a module
• EL I/O Shield
• Thermal sensor cables
• DIY Pedestal
• Fusion Block System Accessory
• Cable Ties
• User's manual

The retail package should be considered as more than complete. Let's take a look to the board.

Besides the typical Mosfet and copper heatpipe complex around the CPU area, we should remind you that the the Asus Striker II Extreme can use a water cooled system. This would seriously keep these heatpipes cool under overclocking.

Four DDR3 DIMMs allow for installation sof up to 8GB of memory:

Six (6) SATAII connectors and oan ATA133 connector are available in an eye-catching blue color.

The Southbridge chip is covered with a passive copper heatsink that is connected with the central water cooling block.

In the picture below you can see the available two PCIe 2.0 x16 lanes (blue) with support for NVIDIA's 3-way SLI technology and a white 1 x PCIe x16.

We faced a small problem when we tried to install a VGA card carrying some large heatpipes:

The I/O panel has the following ports and connectors:

• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard
• 2 x External SATA
• 1 x IEEE 1394a
• 2 x LAN(RJ45) port
• 6 x USB 2.0/1.1
• 1 x Clr CMOS switch
• 1 x Optical + 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF Output1 x onboard LED switch