P5N-T Deluxe and P7N Diamond & Platinum - Asus and MSI 780i boards

Getting close to the launch of the new, or recycled, NVIDIA chipset, we finally have some final designs showing up.

From Asus we have the P5N-T Deluxe which supports the three PCIe x16 slots needed for Triple-SLI, 8-phase power circuitry to the CPU, heatpipe-cooling and an useful IDE port. It also packs a PCI slot, still very useful nowadays and two PCIe x1 slots. You must give up all of these if you plan on going Triple-SLI with stock cooling on the cards. Also of note is the use of only solid capacitors on the board.

The first one from MSI is the P7N Diamond is the top of the line mode and will sell for about 225eur. It features four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, all x8 electrically, one PCI and two PCIe x1. They've thrown the Circu-Pipe cooling to the mix and an 8-phase power circuitry. To my surprise it also has two IDE ports, not very common in the current times, even less on top boards.
This board has it all covered and, if AMD allows it, it can even do QuadCrossFire. Looks like a great board, but I'm holding my breath till I see some reviews.


Finally we have the P7N Platinum, a cut down version of the P7N Diamond. It features only three PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, enough for Triple-SLI, the same 2x IDE ports, Circu-Pipe cooling and got its power circuitry cut to only 4-phase. The rest is pretty much the same, as they're derived designs. Look for a lower price on this one, more or less 175eur.