Intel Skulltrail Platform test

The photo shoot

It's time to study many photo's from our this image gallery. A closer look at the Skulltrail D5400XS mainboard

There it is; the authentic Skulltrail mainboard itself, EATX form factor. With a size of 33x30 CM (13x12 Inches). The PCB is pretty much the same as we can see in server boards yet notice the smaller details. A more refined look, black PCB; then the the four PCIe 16x slots clearly visible out there. Very visible the two CPU sockets (we have the retention clip for the coolers and the CPU already inserted).

Here you can observe the read panel I/O. As you can see Serial and Parallel ports are no a thing of the past. Let's zoom in a little:

We can spot (from left to right) two eSata connectors, 6x USB 2.0, 1x FireWire, One Gigabit Ethernet connector (Intel 82573L), Audio ports analog and one digital optical output (TOSLINK). Audio is managed by Intels High Definition Audio interface and IDT STAC9274 audio codec. And it doesn't suck to be honest, it even support/certifies as Dolby home Theater. All in all quite sufficient though I am missing a second Ethernet connector.

When we flip the mainboard to the left we see two LGA771 sockets for all dual quad-core processor goodness. Nice spacious design btw. Lot's of room for any CPU cooler.

Quite visible ..the two 8-pin power 12 volt connectors especially for dual & quad core processors. It's called the "P4" connector. typically this is a 4-pin connector. Now do not worry if your PSU only has two 4-pin models. It'll work fine and will fit just as well. But with this system you must have a high-end PSU, just pick one with two 8-pin connectors like the Enermax Galaxy Kilowatt PSU we used. The 8-pin model connector can cram 150 Watts directly to these lovely new dual and quad core CPU's.

What you can't see right now is that in front of the CPU socket, LEDs have been embedded; a VR LED and a CPU LED for each processor. When lit, the VR LEDs indicate an elevated temperature in the processor voltage regulator circuit that could affect performance. The CPU LEDs indicate a high temperature on the processor that could affect performance.