Asus First Out Of The Gate With X38 Motherboard
 

Express Gate is actually a self contained instant-on environment that boots before the OS and gives you basic web connectivity as well as Skype and other functionality, like access to the BIOS and more. The EPU (hiding underneath the socket area heat sink - top right), as the name suggests is a small microcontroller of sorts that provides digital monitoring of voltage regulation to the CPU for higher efficiency and stable operation.

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