ASUS P6T @ [H]

[FrgMstr]

ASUS P6T - The ASUS P6T Intel Core i7 motherboard is one of the less expensive in the marketplace. While the board itself does not have all the bells and whistles of the others in the ASUS lineup, the P6T�s performance rivals that of the best boards in the bunch. Does 8+2 phase power make a differnece? How does it overclock for the dollars spent?

The ASUS P6T represents a very good value with the current price of $240 with free shipping from Newegg. The P6T exhibited to us sterling stability and overclocking abilities for a motherboard in its price range. For anyone looking to gain a rock solid mid-3GHz range overclock out of a Core i7 920 processor while saving a few bucks and giving up very few features, you would being doing yourself a disservice if you are not considering adding the ASUS P6T to your build.

 

[Uncle]

I like your Asus article. Years ago before you got on board, DFI had a spot in Kyles heart for stability and overclocking. Lots of awards.Whats happened. I bought quite a few boards from DFI because of his recommendations, I've not had one complaint or return. Do they not have enough favor in your lives. Have they gone belly up in their reliability dept.
One day their the enthusiast board to have, even ahead of Asus, and then all of a sudden they've dropped from radar. I'm confused. Its not just your site. All my previous enthusiast boards were DFI and then Asus. Until I found this reliable worthy site, all my boards were Asus. Could you please enlighten me. Sorry Kyle I'm writing as if from a third party view. I just saw that Steve posted assumed he did the review.

 

[Bigbacon]

Question on the overclock settings. You said the voltages you used were not "excessive" what IS considered excessive?

And all the old talk about the memory voltage should not go higher than 1.65, is that all down the drain at this point?

Overall, I have been using this board since January and I had also, had zero stability issues with it.

 

[RogerTheEngineer]

Great review. I also have nothing but nice things to say about it... except that I had to replace all my locking SATA cables.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Just bought an Open Box from newegg of this for $175 to go with my i7 920 + 6GB DDR3 1600... everything's in except the P6T which is due tomorrow, can't wait to play ! I find it odd that I don't see a mention of the LGA 775 mounting holes for heatsinks offhand in the review... that's an important feature to note.

I found this part of the review somewhat disturbing:

As always, these benchmarks in no way represent real-world gameplay. They are all run at very low resolutions to try our best to remove the video card as a bottleneck. I will not hesitate to say that anyone spouting these types of framerate measurements as a true measuring tool in today’s climate is not servicing your needs or telling you the real truth.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a site claim that 640x480 benches, which inherently are designed to test the CPU and subsystems out, represent anything like actual gameplay. I just thought this dig at sites that use timedemos (which I'll refrain from going into my thoughts on here) was very out of place and kind of random inside this motherboard review. It felt like marketing inserted forcefully.

 

[harmattan]

My experiences with the P6T match this review exactly, right down to breaking the plastic on a SATA header (still works though ). I'm stable at 4.0ghz with 1.4175v.

One nearly fatal flaw I found is with the 775 cooler mount compatibility. The metal brace underneath the CPU socket is thinner than on most i38/48s. You can therefore easily put too much pressure tightening the mounting apparatus. Luckily, the i7 has a failsafe that cuts power if you put so many ft/lbs of pressure on the heatpad. In my case, I fixed a 775 waterblock too tightly -- but not so tight it damaged the die -- the result was fans would rev up full speed, but no error beeps or VGA. A couple people have been reporting the same issue across the forums.

 

[GoldenTiger]

My experiences with the P6T match this review exactly, right down to breaking the plastic on a SATA header (still works though ). I'm stable at 4.0ghz with 1.4175v.

One nearly fatal flaw I found is with the 775 cooler mount compatibility. The metal brace underneath the CPU socket is thinner than on most i38/48s. You can therefore easily put too much pressure tightening the mounting apparatus. Luckily, the i7 has a failsafe that cuts power if you put so many ft/lbs of pressure on the heatpad. In my case, I fixed a 775 waterblock too tightly -- but not so tight it damaged the die -- the result was fans would rev up full speed, but no error beeps or VGA. A couple people have been reporting the same issue across the forums.

Ewwww, thanks for the warning about that . I'll have to be careful tomorrow putting mine in.

 

[FrgMstr]

I found this part of the review somewhat disturbing:

I'm not sure I've ever seen a site claim that 640x480 benches, which inherently are designed to test the CPU and subsystems out, represent anything like actual gameplay. I just thought this dig at sites that use timedemos (which I'll refrain from going into my thoughts on here) was very out of place and kind of random inside this motherboard review. It felt like marketing inserted forcefully.

I am sorry we disturbed you. Please accept my apologies.

 

[FrgMstr]

Question on the overclock settings. You said the voltages you used were not "excessive" what IS considered excessive?

And all the old talk about the memory voltage should not go higher than 1.65, is that all down the drain at this point?

Overall, I have been using this board since January and I had also, had zero stability issues with it.

Well, "excessive" is relative. I don't think we used any voltages that I would be worried about damaging the board or its components over time.

1.65v on the memory is Intel's official stance. I have run it at close to 2v without issue. Not sure I would want to do that for long, but from what I have seen, 1.8v is just fine for long term usage that we know of so far.

It is a great board for the price.

 

[FrgMstr]

Just bought an Open Box from newegg of this for $175 to go with my i7 920 + 6GB DDR3 1600... everything's in except the P6T which is due tomorrow, can't wait to play ! I find it odd that I don't see a mention of the LGA 775 mounting holes for heatsinks offhand in the review... that's an important feature to note.

Very good point. I will note that in the review.

Also very note worthy is the feature that allows legacy LGA 775 coolers to be used with the P6T. Mounting holes are included for both LGA 1366 and LGA 775 coolers, so for those of you that already have a good LGA 775 cooler, you are already in line to save money on another costly cooling solution specifically for Core i7.

 

[khanis]

Nice review.. seems like the best i7 motherboard for the price.

 

[Methadras]

Why the hell haven't they gotten rid of the 40pin ATA yet? Think of the real-estate they could get back by spreading out the satas with locking satas instead. No need for IDE anymore at all if you are going to buy this board.

 

[WldWzl]

Great job, and thank you, reading the insight provided here put me over the edge, just ordered the board and am looking forward to hitting upper 3s with my OC.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Why the hell haven't they gotten rid of the 40pin ATA yet? Think of the real-estate they could get back by spreading out the satas with locking satas instead. No need for IDE anymore at all if you are going to buy this board.

I personally still have legacy IDE drives I use... *shrug* I'd rather have an IDE port onboard than fancy SATA connectors that would work fine as-is without being locking ones. I own drives that are IDE and from time to time need to pop one into my rig (such as upgrading older TiVo units or snapping some data off), so it would be an extra cost to have to buy an IDE card... if they want to continue throwing one onto the board it's all good by me .

 

[Rational Egoist]

I know this is unrelated to the content of the review, but the word 'difference' is misspelled in the opening blurb.

 

[Hypernova]

My first reaction upon reading the article was... bored.

There's is only so much you can spin out of a single chipset.

AMD and SIS dropped out long ago, NV isn't allowed to make ones and while the X58 is fines as is I can't shake that there-should-be-something-else-out-there feeling.

 

[Ron FTL]

Thanks for the review Morry & Kyle. I was hoping that you guys would review the board.

This makes me feel better on my purchase of the P6T yesterday.

 

[FrgMstr]

Why the hell haven't they gotten rid of the 40pin ATA yet? Think of the real-estate they could get back by spreading out the satas with locking satas instead. No need for IDE anymore at all if you are going to buy this board.

I think too many people still have "legacy" optic drives to do away with ATA quite yet.

I know this is unrelated to the content of the review, but the word 'difference' is misspelled in the opening blurb.

Fixed. Next update will reflect this.

The 775 mounting holes was the main reason I bought this board as well. There was just no way I was throwing out a perfectly good waterblock and wasting money on a new one. It was one of two boards on the market with this feature -- the other being the Foxconn Bloodrage which is $75+.

Again, if your cooler has an X brace that fasten the screws to the back of the board watch out you don't over tighten. You really need to be careful gauging the pressure.

QFT! You can destroy the board if care is not taken here.

My first reaction upon reading the article was... bored.

There's is only so much you can spin out of a single chipset.

AMD and SIS dropped out long ago, NV isn't allowed to make ones and while the X58 is fines as is I can't shake that there-should-be-something-else-out-there feeling.

Can't all be that exciting. Meh.

Thanks for the review Morry & Kyle. I was hoping that you guys would review the board.

This makes me feel better on my purchase of the P6T yesterday.

You are welcome, glad we could help.

 

[Atech]

Not to go to much off topic...buuuut this made made me go "WFT???!":

One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of the audio subsystem is via a subjective sound test. Ideally, a sound test requires audio covering the entire spectrum, from subtle to intense. For this test, I chose to listen to the Metallica album Death Magnet.

The audio listening experience was flawless, with no discernable distortion at any time during playback.

Que?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I&feature=related

I would suggest picking a none "Loudness War" Album, if you are going to come off as trustworthy.

(If you didn't use the garbage version(CD) of the album, I am sorry for the mistake and apologizes in advance)

 

[d50man]

I have the P6T and had nothing but easy sailing they need to try clocking again on the 19x cpu multi
i can run at 216bclk with 1.4vcore, 1.4qpi/vtt

And yes the lga 775 mounting holes are nice I use my swifttech apogee on the 920 to cool it.
4.1ghz and 68max cpu temp.

 

[linuxfueled]

Good to see the review,

I have the P6T V1.0 and my 775 cooler was a no go unfortunately. However the Water cooled 1366 allows for windows running at 4400Mhz, not stable though. My sweet spot has been 4100mhz with 3D rendering proven stable. The early BIOs versions were junk for the most part. Ill have a go at the higher ram voltages (2.0v) when I take 6 of the 12 gigs out.

 

[Luca1]

1st off.. Thanks Kyle for your time to check this out.. and not a moment too soon.

Technically man.. you saved me $130 (In Australia), so I owe ya.. if you ever down these ways look me up, there a bottle of whatever for ya

I couldn't find any good reviews on p6t vs deluxe so was going to get a deluxe in 2 days time (figuring it better to overkill than underkill).

I found that in your review you covered every angle I was wondering about.

Will be buying one of these p6t's on thursday..

Cheers mate, awesome

:Luca

 

[MotorMouth]

I bought this when I did my upgrade back at the first of February. I ordered Patriot Viper 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 RAM and a 920, it runs at 3.8 stable. This was my first Intel and ASUS, I could not ask for a better MoBo and CPU.

 

[SlamDunk]

I will buy the SE version of ASUS P6T.

Always had great experiences with ASUS motherboards.

 

[tritonj]

great board, review is spot on

 

[Zefram0911]

Great review guys... this actually made me decide on an upgrade from my Q9450. The clincher was that I could use my old water block on it. FTW! Thanks.

 

[teer1998]

My 1st post:

This site is great, and I think you might even be Dallas based which is a double whammy greatness.

So, I decided to listen to you guys and I bought the P6T and the 920 with 6Gb Patriot 1600. This was my first build and it was surprisingly easy.... until only 4Gb of the 6Gb installed RAM posted in BIOS and Vista. Tried a little bit of everything to get that last 2Gb to post, but it just wasn't happening. I thought I was going to cry, I pulled everything out and as carefully as humanly possible removed the board and returned it. The people at Fry's were great got the new board and now I am firing on all 8 . . . or should I say 6Gb.

40 pin ATA is priceless when you go to buy a SATA Optical and end up with a IDE Optical. Yeah, the guy at the store showed me the bin of SATA opticals, I took it upon myself to grab the drive from the bin over. My fault on that. Also, I had an extra 500GB IDE drive that I popped in for extra data storage. Glad to know I am not the only old school IDE holdout. Exchanged the IDE for the SATA optical.

I haven't messed with the overclocking, mostly because I am scared and ignorant. I tried to find some information about what's safe and what's not. What I've gathered so far: overclocking is not safe if you are ignorant, so there you go.

At some point I want to get a water cooler and do some overclocking for sheets and giggles. Anyone have some low end overclock settings for standard Intel CPU fan. I have an Antec 900 case and its ice cold even after running the computer over night, so hoping the extra fans keeping the ambient temp low will help CPU temp. Again ignorant, so please be gentle.

Loved the review gave me loads of confidence for the build, probably wouldn't have done it without you!!

 

[MotorMouth]

My 1st post:

I haven't messed with the overclocking, mostly because I am scared and ignorant. I tried to find some information about what's safe and what's not. What I've gathered so far: overclocking is not safe if you are ignorant, so there you go.

That is what makes this board and CPU the best I've used. All you need to do is 3 easy steps. Follow the link below and use small increments just watch your temps you should be fine. I've seen mine go as high as 180F and still chug along, I lowered it back down to 3.8 and left it. For the higher overclocks liquid cooling is needed. But you can still get some more out of the system with air, just watch the temps and make small changes on the bus speed.

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MzYwMTAsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE=

 

[Bigbacon]

Kyle or whoever, did you guys have any issues with getting the computer out of sleep mode with the P6T or was that not tested?

 

[teer1998]

I read about the sleep mode issues, but I tried it and have not had any issues. I am running Vitsa 64 ultimate on the plain vanilla P6T with 6gb Patriot 1600 and a GTX260 graphics card. I have also heard about issues with Express Gate, and how not observed any problems there either. So far all bells and whistles functioning properly.

I see mention of monitoring the temps of the various components {CPU, Graphics Card, etc...}, but not sure how this is done. Is there an app you're running or do you use little thermometer probes. Sorry if this is the dumbest question ever, but I am coming off of a 1st gen Pentinum 4, so this is the first time I've ventured into this unknown land. Right now the only performance monitoring application I am runinng is CPU-z.

 

[interested]

Another difference is that the Deluxe will officially support 24GB of RAM and the P6T "only" 12GB.

i was just on the Asus website, and i used the new compare feature that allows you to compare multiple boards side by side, and it shows that the P6T and P6T Deluxe, and P6T Deluxe V2, all support 24GB of RAM?

The vanilla P6T has 6 SATA headers, 2 less than the Deluxe

Again using the compare feature on the Asus website, it shows that the P6T deluxe has only 6 SATA connectors + 2 extra SAS connectors and 1 eSATA, And the P6T deluxe V2 no longer has the extra 2 SAS connectors. So the regular P6T seems to have the exact same number of SATA and eSATA connectors as the deluxe models.

So apparently the only difference is that the first gen deluxe had SAS plugs, while the new V2 deluxe no longer has them, and the regular P6T does not have SAS plugs either.

 

[teer1998]

P6T Deluxe v1 has the Marvel SAS controler and 6 SATA, and the cool raditor fin thingys
P6T Deluxe v2 no Marvel SAS control and 6 SATA, and cool raditor fin thingys.
P6T - "Just plain yogurt" {AKA P6T-JPY} no Marvel SAS controller, 6 SATA and no cool raditor fin thingys.

So unless you plan on running SAS drives in RAID {which disables the Intel RAID controler, check the forums}, or have a love affair with the raditor fan thingys the P6T offers all the same bang for about $50 less bucks. And based on all the reading I have done the P6T-JPY seems to have less buggy issues . . .That being said first P6T-JPY I installed had a bad DIMM slot.

 

[the_frick]

Kyle or whoever, did you guys have any issues with getting the computer out of sleep mode with the P6T or was that not tested?

This is definitely something that should be looked into. The P6T works fine with S3 sleep at BCLK < 160, but as soon as BCLK goes over 160, S3 sleep stops working: you will be able to boot into Vista and sleep/wake once, but after the second sleep cycle the computer will not wake (the board will power on, fans will spin, etc. but no signal ever comes to the monitor).

This is a rather aggravating issue since my board is Prime95 stable at BCLK = 190, but I have to run it at BCLK = 163 in order to be able to put my computer to sleep when it's not being used. (And no, running it 24/7 is not an option when it's drawing ~400 watts.)

Hopefully this will be fixed with a BIOS update in the near future.

 

[teckgood]

Looks like Newegg dropped the free shipping and jacked up the price by $10. I'd remove the link to their site, they don't deserve the promotion if they're going to bait and switch.

 

[Rage_3k_Moiz]

Nice review guys, but will you be reviewing any of the other $200-250 boards like the MSI X58 Platinum or the Gigabyte EX58-UD3R\UD3R-SLI? The Gigabyte board is the cheapest of the bunch, so it'd be interesting to see if it can perform on par with the ASUS board in OCing, the extra PCI-E slot on the P6T notwithstanding since it's a luxury feature anyways.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Looks like Newegg dropped the free shipping and jacked up the price by $10. I'd remove the link to their site, they don't deserve the promotion if they're going to bait and switch.

Normal price fluctuations do not constitute "bait and switch" which is an entirely different practice.

 

[MechGeek]

Kyle or whoever, did you guys have any issues with getting the computer out of sleep mode with the P6T or was that not tested?

I have the S3 sleep issues at 200 BCLK. It never wakes up if put into S3 sleep. Ever.

P6T - "Just plain yogurt" {AKA P6T-JPY} no Marvel SAS controller, 6 SATA and no cool raditor fin thingys.

The vanilla board still has a few of the cool radiator fin thingys...look closer at the pics in the review. And here's a pic i took of mine, looking down through the top case fan.

I've also had difficulties getting the OC stable under 100% load for hours, as mentioned in the review. My board was stable 12+ hours in Prime95 and IntelBurnTest, but running both programs simultaneously would cause both programs to return calculation errors in less than 10 minutes. I had to increase my voltages significantly to reach absolute stability. But now I can run Prime95 + IntelBurnTest all day long, then load Crysis while P95+IBT still run in the background and it runs absolutely flawless.

FWIW, I've had the board running at the settings in my sig for 2 months, and the only time I've *had* to reboot was for updates and new drivers. Otherwise, the system runs 24/7.

Thanks Kyle for validating my experiences with this board.

 

[Ron FTL]

Kyle or whoever, did you guys have any issues with getting the computer out of sleep mode with the P6T or was that not tested?

I have the S3 sleep issues at 200 BCLK. It never wakes up if put into S3 sleep. Ever.

hmm. Mine accidentally went into sleep mode last night. (I for got do disable auto-sleep since I am on a fresh install)

1 click of the mouse woke it out of its slumber.

[185 Bclk btw]

 

[the_frick]

hmm. Mine accidentally went into sleep mode last night. (I for got do disable auto-sleep since I am on a fresh install)

1 click of the mouse woke it out of its slumber.

[185 Bclk btw]

Try deliberately putting it into sleep mode a couple times instead of just once -- for me, sleep/resume works *once* at high BCLK, but the board will not resume on the second cycle of sleep/wake.

 

[scaarbelly]

Issues and more issues.

The first P6T I received from Newegg had 1 bad RAM slot (RAM tested ok in memtest, no errors) so it was only running 4gb in dual. The board seemed great but I had to RMA it, as after lots of searching, it is the only way to fix this issue.

The second board arrives, works for 5 minutes and then dies for good (no there wasn't a short). Powers up but no post beeps, no video signal. I checked everything, but even trying to post with no ram or video card still wouldn't give error beeps. After searching asus I found reference to either bent cpu socket pins or a corrupted bios chip. The pins are small and hard to see but from what I can tell are strait. Maybe it is a bad bios chip because removing the battery and jumping the clrcmos would not do anything. So this board is getting sent back to newegg also, BTW they have been great through this whole process.

I hope that I just had bad luck. From what I can tell you either get a perfect board or problematic right out of the box. I am bummed because this board seems great, but unfortunately for asus I have decided to go with evga instead. I hope it works.