Asus P5K3 to Blitz to X38
I will keep this short and hopefully help some of those of you who are looking at these boards and having a tough time making a decision.
I started off the P5K3 Deluxe, this board is very strong overclocking and extremely stable for 24/7 under a vapochill. The voltages are just enough to keep the system safe for phase change but needs some modification for LN2 or cascade. The vcore maxes out at 1.7v with a vdroop option in bios. The memory voltage is more than enough for DDR3. I went through several bios updates without incident and used the windows util to update. The only problem I can dig up is the location of the bios reset being under the video card. I ran this board on stage at IDF as well as this was my personal gamer. Lots of good feedback on this board and the P5K line. This board is DDR3 only and I was able to reach 500FSB on several quad core processors. NB voltage maxed out at 1.7v and I only ran that high for benching, running 400FSB at stock voltage was no problem at all. This board runs 45nm parts with the current bios.
The Blitz Extreme is based on the P35 w/DDR3 but I found it quite flaky and didnt trust it under the Vapo. The voltages are huge, far more than necessary in some places. There is LED's on the motherboard to indicate voltage and frequency, a nice feature to glance once you know what the different locations are indicating. The Frequency is based on the NB Strap speed not to the frequency range, meaning if you are at 266FSB strap and running 400FSB it will light up LED 2, where 333 strap at 400Mhz will light up LED 3 (going from memory). The LED post display that ships with the unit is very nice and doesnt display a code, rather words to indicate where the boot sequence is in progress. On my board the mobo reset and power switches didnt work and didnt always reboot, some intervention was needed most of the time when overclocked and I am not sure if this problem existed running at stock. Clearing Cmos, changing major options in bios or just rebooting from windows usually resulted in me having to reset or powering off from the PSU for a complete cycle of power. I ran this board for about a week, waited for bios update and tried it again. It can crank the memory and bus speeds but I felt with some stability loss once over 5Ghz with a quad core cpu. We have seen major cap mods done on this board by several of the top guys on this forum, I elected to move on to my next board. This board also comes with an add on sound card, I did not test it to see if it offloaded more from the CPU like other high end sound cards. This board also maxes out at 500FSB with quad core processors. I never connected water to the north bridge.
This board also supports 45nm with current bios release. I had trouble pushing all four memory slots filled above 1600Mhz.
The P5E3 Deluxe is my current board, it uses the X38 chipset and similar to the P5K3 board in voltages. It maxes out on at 1.7v with a droop option. This board is a worthy successor to the P5K3 board. I bumped up from 400FSB to 466FSB at stock voltage on the north bridge for 24/7 stability. The memory voltage available in bios is more than needed. EPU feature does work and lets the CPU run cooler, my display temps on the vapo have never been in the -50's before but they are now. The splash desktop is very cool and does let you go right to the web in a few second with a linux interface and correct driver set to start dhcp and go. USB doesnt work under splash so downloading drivers is not an option yet. I updated bios via the ALT-F2 option at boot and it picked the bios up off a USB drive. This worked correctly. Skype is also a boot option and a splash desktop option, I have not tested it yet. This board reboots fine with the Vapo and I trust it, it does power down with major changes are made in bios, like crossing NB straps, memory ratios, coming off "auto" to name a few. My only complaint is the location of the upper PCI slot being in line with the memory, I need both PCI slots accessible.
AI Suite kinda works, its buggy on X38 but it works fine for PLL adjustments.
Intel Extreme Tuning Utility does not work, I will know more after IDF.
After working on the Intel X38 board, I know this board is capable of so much more.
A small taste of what is possible, this is 24/7 stable on an unmodded board. just the Vcore and memory have been bumped to 1.7v/2.1v respectively with all memory slots filled.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/FORUMS/...chmentid=65342
