ASUS P5B-Plus or P5K for new Intel build

[Soulburner]

After a lot of searching I have found barely a mention of this board on here. It is one of the candidates for my upgrade. The price is attractive and I'm not seeing any real cons. Or am I missing something?

Am I going to have to be the guinea pig? Build is planned around end of July. That will give me 1 full month of planning and preparation.

If you can suggest a better board in this price range, go right ahead. I'd like to run an E6420 @ 8x400 for 3200mhz 24/7. I think this will be a good affordable pair that will blow my not-so-overclockable San Diego 3700+ @ 230x10 out of the water. Which by the way, cost as much by itself as this proposed CPU/Board together, when it was bought new in May of 2005.

Or is investing in 965 now not worthwhile? Should I go with their P5K instead for $10 more? What would that get me? Do the heatpipes really help or is it more of a gimmick? I suppose with the price cuts that a Quad-Core might be in the budget, depends what I am willing to spend, but I think the E6420 is all I really need. Thanks for helping a former Intel guy get back into the Intel game after being away for a very long time.

I also missed the sub-forum and posted this here...a mod can move it when they find it

[Soulburner]

Here is what I am looking at right now...subject to change as always.



Cooler would probably be a Thermalright, I like the one I have on my 3700+.

[jimmyz]

i say go for it! i'm sure it will do fine. and for $450 it is an awesome deal.

first intel build? i see the amd in the sig. if so, i think you will be impressed.

[Truckchase!]

P5K all the way.
P35 is a touch more tweakable, a tiny bit faster, and the P5K can run 4x1 better for future expansion, etc.

[sniggle]

I just got a P5B-Plus for a workstation build at the office and I regret it. The voltage regulation is unbelievably horrible. Others have had the same experience.

[luihed]

Hey Soul... Man its been a loooong time eh bro, its Macro....

All I can say is whatever you do, dont be touching that buy button lol.... Youve waited this long to jump ship you might as well wait another month for the new 1333fsb cpus to come out..... Intel is also making a price cut at around the same time just to make the deal sweeter ..... Nothing wrong with the E6420 but the new stepping should be alot more overclockable.... Only thing maybe worth picking up now are DD2s cos of the low price but whos to say they wont be lower next month.....

Good seeing you again bro....

[ineedaname]

Its P5k for sure.

The P35 chipset was made 2 replace 965. I have the p5k deluxe and its been great.

Memory tweaking on this board is much better than P965 also the fsb is much easier 2 OC. Not to mention you can now change the strap on the fly with the new memset beta.

[Soulburner]

Sounds good...

luihed, wow I didn't even know you were still around. Looks like you are still benching too. Brings me back to the OCAddiction days.

Not my first Intel build, I had a 2.4c system before the A64 and while it was good it just wasn't enough for me. It was a big step up to the 3700+ and this will be hopefully an even bigger step up from that.

I'll see what the market is doing in about a month.

[eklipze]

if you want to tweak and have fun. i suggest p5b but p5k more future usage

[Soulburner]

if you want to tweak and have fun. i suggest p5b

Why?

[hornet]

P5K clear.

Despite of have a similar performance to the P965, you have other options in the bios very interesting.

[eklipze]

its because i have one and i find it very fun to tweak with. p5k is more of a good choice overall

[The Asgard]

P5K is very quad friendly 450+. Reason enough IMO.

[shiznit93]

the upcomming e6x50 cpu's are hitting 4+ghz on air, I would wait a couple of weeks. based on reports here, once modded for vdroop the P5K is a pretty solid mobo.

[michaLcoughliN]

only makes sense to get p5kdeluxe over p5b =/

[Soulburner]

only makes sense to get p5kdeluxe over p5b =/

I don't think I need to drop an extra $75 for features I won't use, so regular P5K it is for me. Even though its the "vanilla" flavor, it isn't that basic when you look at it, looks great to me.

The CPU decision will be considered "pending" until the end of July when it's time to make a decision. However the board and RAM should be solid choices. It will likely change to an E6750 though which is its "replacement".

[Soulburner]

I decided against the ASUS P5K, and will likely go with the ABIT IP35 Pro

[Chewbenator]

Nice let us know how it goes, are you still going with the E6750?

[Soulburner]

Nice let us know how it goes, are you still going with the E6750?

Sure am. Probably won't need the 9x multi of the 6850 with air cooling so the 8x will be perfect with some 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix which is only $70

[erwinz]

Hey Soul... Man its been a loooong time eh bro, its Macro....

All I can say is whatever you do, dont be touching that buy button lol.... Youve waited this long to jump ship you might as well wait another month for the new 1333fsb cpus to come out..... Intel is also making a price cut at around the same time just to make the deal sweeter ..... Nothing wrong with the E6420 but the new stepping should be alot more overclockable.... Only thing maybe worth picking up now are DD2s cos of the low price but whos to say they wont be lower next month.....

Good seeing you again bro....

yup yup.. next month will be fun buying again..

I decided against the ASUS P5K, and will likely go with the ABIT IP35 Pro

thats a good and stable board..

Sure am. Probably won't need the 9x multi of the 6850 with air cooling so the 8x will be perfect with some 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix which is only $70

better buy DDR2 now..




good luck on your build..

[dnottis]

I just got a P5B-Plus for a workstation build at the office and I regret it. The voltage regulation is unbelievably horrible. Others have had the same experience.

Pencil vdroop mod ftw!

[laziepig]

No regret on my P5K over my previous pricey DS4 rev.1 which have cold boot, doesn't clock well, support only 1066fsb, lots of vdrop & vdroop, er... where are we? Nvm about my nagging... Just go for P5K. The pencil mod is working like magic fixing both vdrop & vdroop. bios set 1.45v cpu-z shows 1.448v and before I think it's around a -0.1 drop. 1 thing to highlight if you're going for raid this mobo is kinda weird, you have to raid 1 HDD from internal sata and the other HDD from E-sata.

[Soulburner]

Won't be using RAID. I still think the features on the Abit look better for the same price.