Asus P5B (vanilla) Overview

[Vric]

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For the New Bios options, look starting page 3 of this thread.
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I received the Asus P5B yesterday. I took few picture for you.






The Layout is nicely done, very simple but effective. A bit more space around than the DS3 (the board is wider)

The only thing I really hate in the layout is the eSATA port Asus used on the back I/O. This is nice if you want an external SATA HD, but they use a SATA port on the Raid controller. So there is NO RAID on this board, unless you want to use 1 internal and 1 external drive to do so.. (or maybe IDE drive, I don't know I have none) This thing piss me off a bit.






Here something people won't like. FSB up to 400Mhz max and 2.1V Vdim max !!! I personally don't mind about the 400Mhz max (anyway, most board have a wall at 400Mhz and I don't plan to go that high with my E6600) but the VDimm is bad.. I use OCZ Memory that NEED 2.1V and OCZ warranty them up to 2.2V... but I can't even use that voltage.. If someone know an Asus contact, that would be nice if they could change that to 2.2V at least !

Also note, the Vdrop is about 0.06V and difference between Bios and Windows is 0.04V (if you set 1.4V, you get 1.36V.. 1.30 under load)



The Chipset is quite hot. 130F on load.. Idle, it's about 120F.

And just for fun, it's my setup. With the tunel, the chipset temp drop by 10F (122F load, 109F idle) My Celeron 2.9Ghz running at 3.7Ghz is 38C idle and 46C load. (and yes, I do use a case )


Hope you enjoy.