We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use.

Overclocking Core 2 Motherboards

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

The Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 is among the finest air coolers on the market.

The Striker Extreme

The ASUS Striker Extreme is a high-end board with a boatload of features and a high price to go along with them.

Striker Extreme Optional Chipset Cooler

The chipset cooler keeps the CPU socket snug and cozy.

ASUS Striker Extreme I/O

The Striker Extreme offers a plethora of ports on the rear panel, plus a tiny LCD display that can show diagnostic info.

The ABIT AW9D-MAX

The ABIT AW9D-MAX gives up a 32-bit PCI slot for bizarre placement of legacy storage ports.

AW9D-MAX POST LED

The POST LED can be a handy troubleshooting tool.

ABIT AW9D-MAX I/O

Note the lack of legacy parallel or serial ports. The space is used instead for the passive chipset radiator.

The MSI 975X Platinum

Offering passive cooling that doesn't obstruct large heat sinks, the MSI board also offers a clean layout, but is a little short on connectors.

It's a colorful board

The MSI board wins the award for the most colorful board.

MSI 975X Platinum I/O

The MSI board lacks dual ethernet, but otherwise has a full complement of I/O on the backplate.

The ASUS P5B-E

It's got a lot of stuff packed into a budget board, but only one PCIe X16 slot.

ASUS P5B-E I/O

That's a lot of ports in a small space!

The ASUS Commando

ASUS ships an enthusiast P965 motherboard.

Commando Diagnostic LED & ATX I/O

The rear LED can enlighten you as to the nature of any problems. However, we wonder why the empty space couldn't hold another pair of USB ports…

Commando's I/O

Optical S/PDIF out, and a detachable riser provides the analog ports for an 8-speaker system.