ASUS P5K3 Deluxe @ [H] Enthusiast

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Our evaluation of the ASUS P5K3 Deluxe is online today, give it a read and let us know what you think.


ASUS jumps full force in to the latest Intel chipset with the P5K3 Deluxe board. Featuring support for the latest technologies, including a 1333MHz CPU FSB and DDR3 memory, this board brings a lot of performance potential to the table.
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Well the review is good. But i am disappoint by the overclocking capabilities of the board @ 475. Well it is not bad either but, as i have seen people are hitting above 500fsb with P35 boards and DDR2 memory.

I don;t see any reason to buy DDR3 memory board right now, not to mention the price of DDR3 is outrageous, as you have mentioned also that upgrade to DDR3 board + Memory will alone cost us above $600.

I think i will pass. :D

But good review though, now do us a favour and Review Abit IP35 Pro DDR2 motherboard, there is a lot of buzz about this motherboard hitting above 500FSB mostly.
 
I am a bit miffed on the board receiving a Silver award instead of the Gold. From the review the board had seemed to hit all the right spots, save for a few small things, like the CMOS placement. It makes me wonder if you guys have set your standard and expectations a bit higher for the the community.
 
I always thought our Silver Award meant that the product was pretty effin awesome. The only thing that held it back was what we saw in terms of OC. Being that we are still of an "enthusiast focus" around here, I would suggest giving it a gold would not be quite right.
 
When you guys do a "Max CPU FSB" test, you don't play with the vMCH at all right?

Also how hot do the NB/SB get? I would assume hot because of that ASUS heatpipe jungle.
 
is the aisuite thing simply software and it will work with most Asus motherboards (or non asus boards??) or do you need a special chip to support it as well?
 
WTF! Yours came with the "optional bundled chipset fan" for use with water-cooling/silent operation. My P5K Deluxe did not... and Asus accessories department wouldn't sell me one :-/ (a local computer shop sold me the P5W version which fits pretty well, but not perfectly)

Good review - very thorough. I appreciate all the time you took to capture screenshots of the BIOS screens and bundles apps (AISuite, etc). Real world application benchmarks are very convenient as well (Movie Maker, Premiere, current games, etc).

I do want to point out that "Auto" on the DDR2 version of this board definitely does not set things optimally. I'm not sure how it does on the DDR3 version. (it sets voltages very high and, depending on circumstances, it leaves performance features disabled and timings on the "safe" side)

I recently built a system: P5K-Deluxe, 4x1GB Crucial Ballistix PC8500 / 1066MHz, E6320 CPU:

At 1.375V, it will run at 460MHz FSB with no performance issues or stability issues. But I've been running it at 426MHz / 3GHz / 5:4 ratio 1066MHz @ 5-5-5-15, 2.1V: (subtimings actually on Auto, but for the 5:4 ratio, they are set fairly tight compared to Auto some other ratios - Eva2000 has done some thorough (understatement) benchmarks on the i4memory forum)

memory.jpg


... pretty darn close to the benchmarks you observed on the DDR3 @2GHz and mentioned in this review.


I sorta see where Keiichi is coming from when he mentions the silver vs gold for this motherboard - but at the same time, DDR3 is definitely not where the value / performance is today. Maybe in 6 months or a year... and by that time, there will be newer DDR3 motherboards with cooler features, etc, etc... so after considering things, I do agree that silver is fair for this board, today.
 
Unsurprisingly, the P5K3 Deluxe is a feature complete solution, requiring only the following components for an operational system: an Intel LGA 775 style processor, DDR3 memory, drives, and a PSU. The following components have been integrated in to the design of the P5K3 Deluxe: 6 SATA II ports (RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5 capable) on the Intel ICH9R controller; 1 ATA-133 IDE port, and 2 e-SATA port (RAID 0 and 1 capable) on the JMicron controller; 10 USB 2.0 capable ports (6 in rear panel, and 2 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each); 2 IEEE 1394 capable ports (1 in rear panel, and 1 onboard header); 1 Marvell Yukon GigE Ethernet port in the rear panel; 1 Realtek GigE Ethernet port in the rear panel; 1 Realtek 802.11g wireless Ethernet port in the rear panel; ADI 8-channel HD audio codec featuring an S/PDIF RCA component and optical output ports; and PS/2 port support in the rear panel.
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Something's missing.
 
Nice review, seems like a great board. Very tempting once some more DDR3 modules start coming out.

I'm surprised about the CMOS jumper and battery though, you'd think that ASUS would know that almost anyone who will be shelling out this much for a board will probably also be buying a dual-slot graphics card, which puts the CMOS jumper in a difficult spot. But meh... has there really been a perfect mobo made yet?
 
Was excited when we got therse in at my work. We did a build with it and foounbd out the hard way that the raid setup on this board is lame to say the least.

The only SATA ports that can be raided are the external sata and the port near the pci slots. You can not raid two internal drives with this board. 1 exterrnal, 1 internal. Goofy. Makes sense for mirroring i suppose? But sucks for striping.
 
I just finished up building a system using this board and the temps seem high. It was hard getting the Intel fan assembly attached to the board and it seems to have a slight bow in it. Everything cranked up and has been running for a week straight now. About ready to start the ole OC on it, but the temps are a little concerning. At idle, cpu temp is at 32 and the MB is at 46. With COH and LOTR running it moves to the cpu:44 and MB:52 range. That's as high as i've seen it. I remember some of my older systems in the 60's ranges for the cpu alone. Any ideas, did I break something???
 
I purchased this board around the beginning of June.The board does seem to run a bit hot. I don't know if it's related but after 3 weeks of normal non-overclocked usage the onboard sound & several USB ports stopped working.

The board had to be RMA'd.
 
InGrown said:
I purchased this board around the beginning of June.The board does seem to run a bit hot. I don't know if it's related but after 3 weeks of normal non-overclocked usage the onboard sound & several USB ports stopped working.

The board had to be RMA'd.
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From everything I have read, the P35 chipset runs noticably hotter than the i965 and 975 chipsets that preceded it.

Don't know what to tell you about the USB ports and the RMA though; maybe related to your experience, maybe not.
 
LoneWolf said:
From everything I have read, the P35 chipset runs noticably hotter than the i965 and 975 chipsets that preceded it.

Don't know what to tell you about the USB ports and the RMA though; maybe related to your experience, maybe not.
Click to expand...

It turns out this is just due to the location of the motherboard chipset!

The northbridge itself runs cooler than the 965 chipset!

http://i4memory.com/showthread.php?t=4162
 
is the heatpipe solution on this asus mobo affected by mobo orientation (like in a Lian Li v1200)? I know that wicked heatpipes (heatpipes with wicks, not heatpipes that are evil) can function inverted but i do not know if this mobo's pipes have wicks?
 
I am pretty interested in this board, but the lack of keyboard port is preventing me from getting it. I can't seem to find a usb adapter of some sort for my logitech mx series keyboard. can anyone post a link of a vender who does?
 
OlIv0rIolI said:
I am pretty interested in this board, but the lack of keyboard port is preventing me from getting it. I can't seem to find a usb adapter of some sort for my logitech mx series keyboard. can anyone post a link of a vender who does?
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Do an Ebay search. I bought a dual PS2-to-single-USB adapter for $5 with free shipping six months ago so I could hook legacy-free Dell systems to my KVM when I needed to work on them.

One thing though --are you seriously prepared to pay $400 for two gigs of DDR3 RAM? That's a lot of dough to dump when DDR2 prices are currently somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 the cost of DDR3.
 
Great review... I've actually began building my new system starting with P5K3 Deluxe. I've decided to spare no expense on this system "hoping" that I'll have it for quite a while so I will be using intel core duo 2 extreme and using Vista 64. I can't help but think that it is possible that if you were to use a 64bit OS couldn't that help in the OC stability?
 
I think I should also add another note: There are P35 chipset mainboards that use DDR2. From reviews I've seen so far, DDR2 and DDR3 performance are similar on a P35 chipset mainboard. In both cases, memory performance is faster than on previous chipset mainboards, but nearly identical to each other.

For this reason, if it were me, I'd look for the DDR2 P35 board. I believe ASUS makes a board similar to the PK53, but in a DDR2 option. Cutting the cost of RAM in half or more would allow you to "spare no expense" on a video card, or a larger hard disk or LCD panel, or even double your RAM for a similar price, and if you buy 4GB of DDR2 for less than the price of 2GB of DDR3 now, well, how likely are you to need a RAM upgrade anytime soon? Just my two cents.

EDIT: After looking, that similar mainboard turns out to be the ASUS P5K Deluxe.
 
This is all well and good but what about the ABIT IP35 and other cheaper boards?
 
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