The Asus P4S 333 is a compact board; so compact that none of components has much breathing space.

Because of this, care must be taken when adding the cooling sink for the CPU as on all sides of the 478 socket there are transistors lining the walls. Some of them even have contact with the P4 retention clip, and any variation of the heatsink layout that extends past the base of the retention clip won't be able to fit on this board. Even the SIS 645 Northbridge heatsink comes perilously close to the CPU socket.

Although there are three DIMM sockets provided, if you run the memory at DDR333 speeds only two of the slots can be used. The manual states that if all three memory banks are in use with double-sided DDR DIMMs, you cannot run them all at PC-2700 speeds, rather you should run them at PC-2100 (DDR266) speed. With two DIMMs installed, you can run DDR333 speeds with full stability.

Expansion-wise the P4S 333 comes with six PCI slots and a single ACR slot (and the last PCI slot and ACR slot are shared expansion slots) and headers for up to six USB ports (two on I/O panel, four via pins). The I/O panel of the board is standard fare with single serial and parallel ports, two USB and PS/2 ports and three audio ports.

The onboard sound is provided by a C-Media 8738 PCI controller chip which allows for 5.1 setups, and interestingly there are jumpers on the motherboard that allow you to set the C-Media audio chip to change the center channel to a dedicated sub-woofer channel, and vice-versa. The P4S 333 is another motherboard whose DIMM sockets run too close to the AGP 4X slot to enable the memory to be changed quickly.

Scattered around various other places on the board there are headers for a Winbond temperature monitor, Smart Card and Memory Stick devices and, not surprisingly, support for the Asus IPanel.

A motherboard that supports the new SIS 645 chip well, the Asus P4S 333 is a well built and well performing board.