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| Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi Motherboard Review |
| Written by Maxit | ||||||
 Price: £129.95 exc vat Supplier: Asus Manufacturer: Asus Visit the Asus P5B Deluxe Owners thread down in the MaXit forums for overclocking tips, bios updates, motherboard advice and more. Conroes here. Hip hip, hooray. Intel's Core 2 Duo series of processors is probably the most exciting thing since Jessica Biel's butt popped onto the big screen and for good reason. It's an overclockers dream. Puny little 1.86GHz processors can be transformed into mega gigahertz monstas with a quick bios adjustment and a few extra volts. No need for complex phase change cooling or exotic aftermarket heatsinks. Running a lower spec E6300 at speeds in excess of the Intel Core 2 DUO Extreme Edition X6800 processor is practically childs play, if you have the right system components of course. Enter the Asus P5B Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 WiFi Edition Motherboard. Trying saying that after a few beers.  Click to enlarge The features on Asus products are stuff of legends. When you see the words deluxe you are guaranteed a rich spec, superb build quality, bundles of accessories and sexy packaging. The P5B doesn't disappoint. It's clear the technical wizards at Asus R & D pull the strings and are given license to build products with no expense spared. It might cost more than your no frills budget boards but it really feels like you are getting double your moneys worth. Lots of package might be good for the girls but us guys want the performance too. Just aswell Asus are committed to making the fastest most overclockable Conroe motherboard on the planet. Not content on breaking the 500Mhz FSB barrier, their development team continue to tweak, test, push and torture the P5B, releasing bios updates to push performance to the edge. Your not just buying a motherboard from Asus, your buying the whole development team who are with you every step of the way on your quest for the dream machine. P5B Specifications
Overclocking Features
Back Panel I/O Ports
Internal I/O Connectors
BIOS
Accessories
Dimensions
Phew! The Asus P5B Deluxe Packaging
Since we've harped on about the packaging so much, we thought you might like some eyecandy.   Click for joyful and relived feelings!  Click to Enlarge  P5B Deluxe Up Close
The motherboard has some interesting design features. The fanless heatpipe cover the bits that like to get hot, allows for silent computing. 
An extra fan is supplied for the heatpipe fans if your planning on installing some watercooling or passive cooling gear. A welcome bolton allowing enthusiasts extra flexibility in more exotic systems.  
Another interesting feature is the advertised support for 8GBs of DDR2. While 2GB is the choice for many users, the option to expand is always welcome. Remember when 1 gigabyte of ram was considered overkill. It won't be long before four and eight are the norm. Eight SATA ports and raid 0,1,5 and 10 options allow for plenty of storage possibilites. The P5B Deluxe motherboard really is as future proof as you could hope for with bags of room to grow, expand and addon.
P5B Deluxe Lab TestsThe test setup for the Asus P5B deluxe consisted of a Intel 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB Mushkin XP2-8000 DDR2, Geforce 7900 GT graphics card, Western Digital raptor hard drive, BeQuiet 700w power supply and Windows XP Pro. The same kit and tests were conducted on a Gigabyte GA-965 DS3 motherboard for comparison.OverclockingOf course we couldn't resist torturing the P5B. Overclocking results were fantastic with the 2.4GHz transforming into an Intel Extreme beating prime95 stable 3.6GHz monsta. A Bios upgrade to 0505 was applied and then the FSB was ramped up till the cpu couldn't take anymore. Overclocking really is very easy with the Asus. The motherboard showed no signs of any strain. To see just how far this board could go, an E6300 chip was dropped in and the multiplier lowered to 6x. How does 535MHz FSB tickle your fancy on stock cooling?
Asus have just released another bios revision with the ability to do a whopping 650MHz FSB. The MaXit Monsta machine has gone off to Area 51 with the P5B in tow for some heavy duty watercooling. We'll keep you posted on our overclocking adventures with this motherboard as soon as it returns. The Results    The Asus board managed to pip our team favourite Gigabyte DS3 board in every test. The P5B has an advantage in memory bandwith and latency and this carried through the results. We have suspected for some time that the internal subsystem of the DS3 is running more relaxed timings which in part counts for its amazing ability to overclock so well. Clearly Asus have made no such comprise on the P5B, with aggressive performance and overclockability to boot. Asus Customer SupportBuying a new component is great when nothing goes wrong but what about when problems arise. Asus pride themselves on their customer support backup program and we decided to see just how good their claim was. We filled out a customer support form via their UK website asking for help with a driver issue and software compatability problem. The form was sent at 9.35 am from a private email account. An email arrived from Asus member support at 9.45 am."The system has received your query. We will process your query ASAP. However, due to vast number of queries waiting to be processed each day, we may not be able to respond your query immediately. If your query is not replied within 48 hours, please connect to the following URL and search. Thank you." We were amazed when another email arrived at 10.33 am from a technical support representative with a list of possible solutions and a new driver update to try. Contact less than an hour after our original query. How's that for fast service. The Bottom LineHuge overclockability, bags of spec and great expandability make the Asus P5B Deluxe a champion choice for Core 2 Duo processors. The P5B ticks all the right boxes for even the most demanding hardware enthusiast. Home theatre, multimedia, games rig. Whatever your flavour the P5B Deluxe provides the perfect base to build from. Factor in Asus's determination to take this board to the performance edge with continued Bios tweaks and it's clear to see you have one of the most future proof and flexible Core 2 Duo motherboards on the market.Throughout our tests the board behaved impeccably even when we pushed it over the limits. A simple reset and the board posted again without the hassle of a CMOS reset. Provision for watercooling or passive systems is even catered for. It really is hard to believe so much could be crammed into one board. If you've been sitting on the sidelines planning your dream system and waiting for the Conroe dust to settle, do yourself a favour and take a good long look at the Asus P5B Deluxe. We don't think you'll find a finer motherboard. Pros
Cons
Not content on pushing this board to the limits, we enlisted the help of the UK's no.1 watercooling specialist and crazy modder to create a dream machine based around the Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard. Watch out for the full feature coming soon as we attempt to push the P5B to the edge with a little help from Danger Den and the Coolmieste
To find out the progress of the MaXit Monsta, head down to the forums and check out the project logs. Don't forget you can share your tips, find out about overclocking the P5B and post your findings in our Official Asus P5B Deluxe owners thread. Special thanks go out to Ben at Asus PR for making all this possible.
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