ASUS P5k Deluxe - Review

[[ Ba0o ]]

ASUS P5K Deluxe Motherboard Review

Introduction: BearLake™ Ready!

Before you start working those neurons trying to figure out what I meant by BearLakeâ„¢ Ready, let me put you out of your misery. BearLake™ is Intel's codename for their P35 chipset, which is their latest entry in the chipset domain. But why such a fuss over a newer chipset you may ask? Well for the technically challenged a newer chipset may not mean much, but for the enthusiasts it's a gateway to endless possibilities and that is exactly why, pioneers like ASUStek have already started embedding this new technology into their motherboards.

BearLake™ being the most prominent feature of the board let us start by taking a closer look at what the newer chipset really has to offer.

Apparently Intel wanted to enter the DDR3 market but didn't want to overhaul their existing chipset design. Hence they pretty much stuck with the original blueprint give or take a few features, though worth mentioning.

The attached chart highlights some major features. Apart from increasing the number of USB 2.0 ports and eSATA, the memory bandwidth has significantly increased w.r.t the P965 chipset. The new chipset supports 1333MHz System Bus Speed and not to mention next-generation 45nm dual- and quad-core processors. Another feature worth mentioning here is the Intel Turbo Memory® option once famous with the alias Robson. This particular feature is a large flash memory cache for that extra juice and to offer best value performance for the consumer.

A skeptical observer may point out that the features supported on the chipset can not be taken advantage of as there is no hardware available in the market as of yet. But industry leaders like ASUStek have taken advantage of this particular technology through their unique set of expertise and innovation. ASUStek in particular has come up with the most feature heavy motherboard amongst the competition thus proving once again pursuing its consumer oriented strategy.

Finally, we shift our attention to the motherboard.

Spoiler: Here's a sneak-peak

Visuals: Black is Hip!

The motherboard comes in a rather fancy packaging with a dominating black scheme. There's a flap at the front with ASUStek’s trademark logo AI Life� in the middle signifying ultimate user experience. Once the front flap is flipped, the board's key features can easily be seen displayed in an ordered fashion. Though the most striking claim amongst them all and put right on the front of the box is the board's ability boast 75% faster work with the memory subsystem as compared to other products.

This time around ASUStek colored their PCB in black to compliment their huge copper passive cooling solution and the color coded slots . Overall, I like how the board looks and the board seems to be a worthy contender against the over-clocking boards available in the market. But does the P5K have what it takes to make the P5B devotees switch? Let's have a look see.

Board Design: My, What big heat-sinks you have

I fell in love with the heat-sinks and the heat-pipes configuration. It reminds me of the ASUS™ Striker™ or the Commando™ design which by the way are a force to reckon with in terms of performance and design.

A single copper heat-pipe can be seen emerging from the ICH9R Southbridge and connecting to the P35 Northbridge after which it splits up into two heat-pipes along the way ending up at the back of the board to discharge all that heat out of the system casing and all that you would require is an optional fan installed at the back of your casing.

Not only does this cooling solution look good but also performs impeccably under over-clocked settings. Refer to the over-clocking section to see how the board performed under stressful conditions.


As with the P5B Deluxe, to power the board you'll require a power supply with a 24-pin ATX power connector and either a four or an eight-pin auxiliary power connector. The Power plug has been cleverly placed at the mid-right edge of the board to abstain from any unnecessary wiring flooding the board. The 8-Pin EPS-12v connector has also been conveniently place on the top-left portion of the board to avoid any dangling wires obstructing other hardware on the motherboard, just the way I like it.

You can always expect quality and performance with the Deluxe model and the clear proof of that would be the replacement of the electrolyte capacitors with 100% solid state aluminum capacitors. The CPU though surrounded by some heavy-duty copper heat-sinks has enough room to accommodate any external cooling option with reasonable size.

ASUStek’s innovative 8-phase design is at display in the above picture which offers stability and low power consumption and hence a feature greatly admired by the over-clocking enthusiasts.



Let’s move to the lower right portion of the board now. Here we see 6 SATA ports available for our use neatly organized vertically with respect to the board layout. This however poses a bit of a problem to 8800Ultra/X1950 (or cards in that size-category) users, as they are bound to eat up two of the 6-SATA slots leaving us with only 4. Although the ‘L’ shaped SATA-cable provided by ASUS may save one of them.

As for the PATA slot, well, Intel’s ICH9R does not support PATA anymore hence on this board you’ll find a JMicron JMB363 controlled PATA port unorthodoxly placed at the bottom of the board – pretty annoying really, as for you to connect your ROM drive, you’ll have to get yourself a really long IDE cable and maneuver it through the other wires.


Moving to the bottom left of the motherboard we stumble upon the expansion slots – the place where the real action takes place. There’s no real configuration change with respect to the P5B Deluxe, so much so they never got rid of the little bug we pointed out before i.e. to change the CMOS battery, the user will ultimately have to take out the graphic card first.

So there are 4 PCIe x16 slots and 3 PCIe x1 slots available on the board. As the board is aimed for the enthusiast block, users are bound to use the Dual Slot graphic cards. Worst comes to worst, if you decide to use 2 dual slot graphic cards in parallel you’ll end up with only 1 PCIe x1 slot – probably for you audio card. But judging from the current availability of PCIe x1 hardware in the market, the single slot would do fine.

As can be seen from the above picture, we tried to show the Dual Graphic Card configuration by connecting two cards with not too big cooling solutions. Despite the small area of the cards it is clear that there is no space what so ever for any PCI card on the board. I bet you're thinking what would happen if I jam my Audio Card right in the middle - well, be my guest....You can now get crystal clear audio and enjoy the smell of your card while it's being barbecued (would you like fries with that?).


Now we come to the highlight of this board – *drum roll* the DIMM ports. The Black and Yellow colored DIMM ports clearly distinguish the two channels. Though the P5K deluxe supports the DDR2-800 officially but also supports native DDR2-1066 ending the need to over-clock – hassle free performance boost. This is what the P35 chipset is all about, and the performance difference was clearly seen while testing the system, as on default settings there wasn’t much difference to show for with respect to the older enthusiast boards but once set to DDR2-1066 the system really came to life.

Now we turn our attention to the back of this board and find a rather unorthodox change. One of the two PS/2 ports has been removed to make way for 2 USB slots. Well I can’t say how I feel about this change as I for one loved the PS/2 option for my mouse; being a Counter Strike and Quake fan, I want the maximum transfer rate which for my Logitech MX-300 is only available with the PS/2 option i.e. 200 while when on USB it is limited to a mere 125.

We have 4 more USB inputs available divided into 2 blocks with a Gigabit network connection on each. Hence we end up with a plentiful 6 USB input option.

In the middle of the 2 Gigabit connections, ASUS provided the eSATA ports – finally, triple the transfer speed of USB or the Firewire (which by the way is also provided on the same block).

Add-ons and Accessories: Show me the goodies...

Digging away in the corn flakes box looking for free toys as a toddler is not even close to the joy I get while looking for free goodies in the deluxe packaging (and No I don’t look for toys in my corn flakes box anymore)

Anyway, the first thing you’ll notice would be the small circular antenna for the Wi-Fi module, which by the way is powered by RealTek.

Next up we have, my favorite, the Q-connector. I bet this little thing is just as important for the reviewers as the Spatula is for SpongeBob. Without this little invention from ASUS, resetting and powering an open system is the most tedious process ever.

Nothing much to discuss for the rest of the accessories – the same ol’ stuff. We have 2 UDP cables and 4 SATA cables, out which one of them is the ‘L’ shaped angular cable for those tricky situations.

AI Life: Heart touching – Indeed!


Life should be simple and easy, and that is what this particular list of features intends to do. Performance at the click of a button – do the same stuff the rocket scientists would do without all that math crap.

Native DDR2 1066 Support:
To attain top performance, ASUS engineers have successfully unleashed the true potential of DDR2 memory. While in DDR2 1066 mode, ASUS´s exclusive technology offers a choice of FSB 1333 - providing great performance for 3D graphics and other memory demanding applications.

ASUS Super Memspeed Technology:
[Surpass the Limit with Easy Overclocking Automatically]
To attain top performance, ASUS has managed to break through current FSB and DRAM ratio proportions by utilizing Super Memspeed Technology - the latest technology that provides even more precise overclocking options to unleash the true potential of DDR2 memory. Native DDR2 1066 maximizes system performance by eliminating the bottleneck when overclocking both the CPU and memory - providing great performance for 3D graphics and other memory demanding applications.

AI Slot Detector:
[Assists in Proper Installation for PCIe/PCI Devices]
When PCIe/PCI devices are installed, users can simply plug in the power cable and find out if these devices are successfully installed. Without even switching on the PC or entering the operating system, ASUS´s innovative on-board LEDs provide an efficient way to identify the correct way to set up the PC.

Fanless Design - Heat Pipe:
[Support side-flow fan or passive cooler]
The Heat Pipe design effectively directs the heat generated by the chipsets to the heatsink near the back IO ports, where it can be carried away by existing airflow from CPU fan or bundled optional fan. The purpose of the innovative heat pipe design on this motherboard is that the groundbreaking fanless design does not have lifetime problems as a chipset fan does. Furthermore, it provides options for users to install side-flow fan or passive cooler. The Heat Pipe design is the most reliable fanless thermal solution to date.

Save 50% CPU Power - AI Gear 2:
[Power Savings for Environment-Friendly Computing]
AI Gear2 allows users to choose profiles to adjust CPU frequency and vCore voltage to minimize system noise and power consumption. For example, users can change the mode in real-time in the operating system to max power saving mode and can save up to 50% power for the CPU when using word processing applications.

CrashFree BIOS 3:
[Simply restore corrupted BIOS data from USB flash disk]
The ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 allows users to restore corrupted BIOS data from a USB flash disk containing the BIOS file. This utility saves users the cost and hassle of buying a replacement BIOS chip.

Precision Tweaker:
[Achieve system maximum performance!]
It offers ways to raise system performance inch-by-inch and step-by-step to achieve maximum performance! This is about getting the most out of your machine and taking pride in your customized computer.
vDIMM
- Take control of how much power is going into the memory modules. This motherboard gives you 13-step voltage control to the DIMM.
vCore
- Find out "exactly" how much power your CPU needs. Fine-tune it with 0.0125 volts at a time!
SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection) allows
- FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 800MHz at 1MHz increment
- Memory tuning from 667MHz up to 1333MHz at 1MHz increment
- PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment

ASUS WiFi-AP Solo:
[Easily Connect and Share Data Wirelessly]
WiFi AP Solo allows a new level of versatility for your PC, enabling it to create a complete wireless home network in either AP or wireless client mode. Users will be able to play LAN games, connect to the Internet, access and share printers, and use Skype from anywhere within range. WiFi-AP Solo can provide these functions even when the PC is in sleep mode, so users can use Skype as a true replacement for tradition long distance telephone service. WiFi-AP Solo is an on-board feature, which means that user will save the extra WiFi AP cost.

SATA on the Go:
This motherboard supports the next-generation hard drives based on the Serial ATA (SATA) 3Gb/s storage specification, delivering enhanced scalability and doubling the bus bandwidth for high-speed data retrieval and saves. The external SATA port located at the back I/O provides smart setup and hot-plug functions. Easily backup photos, videos and other entertainment contents on external devices.

Dual RAID:
The Intel ICH9R chipsets incorporate Six Serial ATA connectors with high performance RAID functions in RAID 0, 1. The JMicron controller provides another two Serial ATA connectors for RAID 0, 1, and JBOD functions. This motherboard is the ideal solution to enhance hard disk performance and data back up protection without the cost of add-on cards.


AI-SUITE:

The engineers at ASUStek came up with this neat software for users who are new to the whole over-clocking domain. All you have to do is to point-and-click and you're done.

You can either let the board take care of the over-clocking by using AI N.O.S or tweak your CPU-frequency and multiplier through AI Booster. These are relatively basic settings to improve performance and were put in there for beginners.

But as they say, to go the extra mile you have to walk the distance – or something like that. And that brings us to over-clocking as for true over-clocking experience, you'll have to step into the world where there's all blue and gray(and it rocks without pictures).

Over clocking: Chloroform….Satchel…..Operate!!

Amazingly, over-clocking on this board is as easy as picking your nose, only you don't have to deal with the mess afterwards - well, if you're using a good power supply, you won't. Anyways, attached below are some of the advanced tweaking screens from the BIOS v0404 of this board displaying the vast array of options that can be meddled with to improve overall system performance.

Jumper Free Settings

This is where the real action takes place......

FSB Strap to North Bridge

PCIE Frequency

CRAM Command Rate

CPU Voltage

DRAM Voltage

South Bridge Voltage

North Bridge Voltage

AI OverClocking Easy Options

A bit more tweaking

Save your Settings - Good Stuff

But no more than 2 Profiles - Original and Backup

BENCHMARKING

CPU-Z: CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.

TAT (Intel Thermal Analysis Tool) accurately monitors all of the individual core temperatures for Intel processors like the Core 2 Duo and Quad range.

TEMPERATURE - IDLE

TEMPERATURE - UNDER FULL LOAD

SiSoftware Sandra: SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Super Pi SSE2: The program calcualtes the value of pi upto 4,294,960,000 decimal digits. This record is probably he current world record of pi. The program performs 4.2 billion calcualtions. The motherboard scores an amazing 15 in the following test.

[IMPORTANT]

For the following comparisons we made slight adjustments to our BIOS settings i.e. everything was on stock except 1066 FSB was increased to 1333 FSB and DDR2-800 was increased to DDR2-1066, that's it (really!).


3DMark 2006: 3DMark06 is the latest and hottest version of the very popular 3DMark series. By combining full DirectX®9.0c support including HDR, SM3.0, SM2.0, new CPU tests and more, 3DMark06 continues the legacy of being industry standard benchmark.

PCMark®05: PCMark reliably and easily measures the performance of your PCand determines its strengths and weaknesses. The P5K-Deluxe(Over-Clocked) shows the major difference between the stock settings.

[IN GAME PERFORMANCE]

F.E.A.R

FAR CRY

QUAKE IV

The aforementioned comparisons paint a tricky picture. It seems as if the motherboard at stock settings has been clobbered by the P6N Diamond, but a true enthusiast should know that this motherboard has not even come close to being over-clocked yet. We haven't even meddled with the voltages or the multiplier for that matter, and already the P5K managed to gain quite some lead. The true potential of this board is unleashed when you start playing around with thousands of options available of over-clocking available at your disposal.
I managed to over-clock my board from a humble 2.4Ghz (stock) to a moderate 3.2GHz (8x400) with ease. The board proved stable enough to handle full stress for hours, in fact it never went down on me irrespective of my rather feeble PSU (relatively speaking). This board is capable of handling large FSB's up to a staggering 500.

CONCLUSION

For once in my life I managed to over-clock my system without any hassle what so ever. The performance difference is mind boggling. The P35 chipset allowed me to shift to 1333Mhz FSB without changing any stock settings. Faster timings for your DDR2 and pushing your CPU to the limit without any extra voltage, what else can you want? For the true enthusiasts, this card offers a massive amount of over-clocking options. You can play around with all the options and are bound to get addicted once you see the performance boost up.

All the over-clocking potential coupled with the feature set provided by ASUS, especially the luxurious WiFi-connector, is a great package. If you're planning to upgrade to a newer system these days, do opt for the P5K. But, if you're a little short of budget and don't want to upgrade to the P35 chipset, then I suggest you buy yourself the P5B - Deluxe. Though there were minor complications too, as pointed out above, the PCI slots can not be used if you're planning to connect to Graphic Cards via SLI or Crossfire - so say good bye to your audio cards. As far as the price tag is concerned, this particular card is not out of reach and comfortably affordable. All you need is a good PSU and a cooling solution and you're set to go where no board has gone before - that is all.

Performance: 9.2/10
Stability: 9.0/10
Innovation: 8.5/10

Overall: 8.9/10

The ASUS P5K Deluxe recieves the WCCF Enthusiast Award for extreme OverClocking performance.

[Click here to post your comments and feedback]