better OC: ASUS P5K-E vs. GIGABYTE P35-DS3R

better OC for a watercooled Q6600: ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP or GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R ?

  • ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP

    Votes: 7 50.0%

  • GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R

    Votes: 7 50.0%
  • Total voters
    14
  • Poll closed .
L

leo_bsb

n00b
Joined
Nov 26, 2005
Messages
21
ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP vs. GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R

I'll buy a new mobo for a Q6600 next week and now I narrowed my search for these two boards.
Which one is a better overclocker for a quad? I'll watercool the quad and video card.
The asus has heatsinks on the mosfets and Wi-fi for $26 more.
both have ICH9R and all solid caps.
 
How far do you plan on OC'ing to? 4Ghz would only require 445Mhz FSB, which either of those boards is easily capable of. The P5K-E has 8-phase power, while the DS3R has 6-phase power.
 
enginurd said:
How far do you plan on OC'ing to? 4Ghz would only require 445Mhz FSB, which either of those boards is easily capable of. The P5K-E has 8-phase power, while the DS3R has 6-phase power.
Click to expand...

I'm aiming between 3.6 and 4 GHz.
I want to know about overall OCability for the two.
Thanks for the input.
 
Currently finishing up my build with a P5K-E/WIFI-AP EDITION.
Can't say much about OC-ability though, I'm afraid.
(Why does Asus insist on using all caps?!)
 
I was at a comp show a couple weeks ago and ended up buying the P5K-E. I wanted the Abit IP35 Pro but couldn't find one and the P5K-E was sitting there @ $160 bucks so I gave in and bought it. I figured since it's an Asus and if I had any problems at least I had a place I could take it back to. But I can say that the thing has been rock solid with my Q6600 overclocking. I've had all sorts of memory timings / multiplier combinations and it's been very forgiving if I go too far, so I have settled on an oc of 3ghz on air for now. But that's still being overly cautious, it ran great @3.2 ghz and I know I could go higher if I want to mess with the memory more.
I was going to still get the Abit and shuffle this one down to my other rig but I think I'm going to go ahead and activate my copy of Vista 64bit on it to seal the deal.

Don't see too many people complaining a whole lot on the Asus forum about it so that was a good sign too.
 
I'd get the Gigabyte board based on quality alone.
 
Glow said:
I'd get the Gigabyte board based on quality alone.
Click to expand...

Nah, I'd go with an Asus. I heard bad things about Gigabyte boards.

PK5 is a solid board, overclocks like a beast if you need that much power. It can be taken to 3GHz levels with a Q6000 without breaking sweat.
 
spicey said:
Nah, I'd go with an Asus. I heard bad things about Gigabyte boards.

PK5 is a solid board, overclocks like a beast if you need that much power. It can be taken to 3GHz levels with a Q6000 without breaking sweat.
Click to expand...

I can attest of this, it's a great board and I'm now temp limited so I will now build a watercooling setup to take my Q6600 further. The BadAxe2 I owned before is really limited :(

 
I am running a q6600 at 3.89ghz on air alone, stock voltage, no tweaks, simply increased FSB
Easiest OC I have ever had.....
Vista 64bit, 4-1gig DDR2 ram, GTX8800, rock solid, screamer
 
spicey said:
PK5 is a solid board, overclocks like a beast if you need that much power. It can be taken to 3GHz levels with a Q6000 without breaking sweat.
Click to expand...
tbh that's true of any of the decent P35 mobos - even the $65 abit IP35-E will do that.
 
BUFF said:
tbh that's true of any of the decent P35 mobos - even the $65 abit IP35-E will do that.
Click to expand...

Maybe true, I looked at the Abit IP35-E (Abit makes great boards IMO - never had any issues) but it lacks features and uses inferior quality capacitors. The Gigabyte board has the best features but the techincal forums at http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum-12-194.html put me off. The DS3R in particular has quality issues.
 
spicey said:
Maybe true, I looked at the Abit IP35-E (Abit makes great boards IMO - never had any issues) but it lacks features and uses inferior quality capacitors. The Gigabyte board has the best features but the techincal forums at http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum-12-194.html put me off. The DS3R in particular has quality issues.
Click to expand...

Every company has quality issues every now and then, and every board has VDroop. With that said, I've personally used 3 P35-DS3R rev1.0 boards and have had no issues with them. They're great boards, IMO. Your chances of getting a bad board are the same from both Gigabyte and Asus, but if you get a bad one, just RMA it.

leo_bsb said:
I'm aiming between 3.6 and 4 GHz.
I want to know about overall OCability for the two.
Thanks for the input.
Click to expand...

One thing to note about the DS3R is that if you plan to take the FSB high, you'll need better chipset cooling. So, if you want to OC high without having to replace the NB cooling, get the DS4 or P5K-E instead, or some other board with heatpipe chipset coolers.
 
I have the DS3R and if I had to do it over again I would probably choose the P5K-E given your choices. Chipset cooling is an issue and I don't like the way the bios handles setting and reporting voltages.
 
The ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP is the board I plan on using for my next rig build in a few weeks with a Q6600 G0 and I plan on just running it at 3ghz on air. I have heard only good things about this board.

Gigabyte's CS sucks and the RMA process is worse then rubbish, I had a board go bad, got an RMA, sent the board in and they sat on it for 2 months then sent it back to me saying there was no problem. The board didn't work, I tried another MB in its place and everything was fine. Gigabyte refused another RMA saying there was nothing wrong and they wouldn't exchange for another board.
 
Nanan said:
The ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP is the board I plan on using for my next rig build in a few weeks with a Q6600 G0 and I plan on just running it at 3ghz on air. I have heard only good things about this board.

Gigabyte's CS sucks and the RMA process is worse then rubbish, I had a board go bad, got an RMA, sent the board in and they sat on it for 2 months then sent it back to me saying there was no problem. The board didn't work, I tried another MB in its place and everything was fine. Gigabyte refused another RMA saying there was nothing wrong and they wouldn't exchange for another board.
Click to expand...

Really? I recently RMA'd my friend's DS3 board and had no problems. It took 2 weeks to get it replaced. Asus took even longer with my other friends M2N-E board -- 4 weeks!!! But he handled that RMA himself, not me. I don't think I've ever had an RMA take longer than 4 weeks though, through either company. The last Asus RMA I handled was for an M2N-VM, and it only took 2.5 weeks.

Sometimes, its just about being nice on the phone and giving them no excuses to take longer -- as well as showing them how competent you are. If you come off as a punk, you probably won't get the respect you deserve.
 
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