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The ASUS P5B Deluxe motherboard is one of the most sought out boards for the Core Duo platform. This time around, we received the WiFi-AP equipped version of the board. However, the non-WiFi equipped version is basically the same board, so this review also applies to that board. Like any other high-end offering from ASUS, or any other manufacturer for that matter, the ASUS P5B Deluxe is filled with a lot of features. Even ASUS's description with the board is the longest out of the four boards we tested today.

Let's start with the bundle. The ASUS P5B Deluxe comes with a plethora of cables: the standard floppy and IDE data cable, 6 SATA data cables, 3 SATA power cable with two SATA connector each and lots of other goodies. The 6 SATA cables assures that you can quickly use the 6 SATA connectors on the motherboard, if you choose to do so. ASUS also provides 1 eSATA connector in the back panel area of the board, which allows you to plug in a SATA hard drive for example to do backups without opening the case. However, you still have to provide power connections to the external drive from another source. Two other accesories - the ASUS Q-Connector and Array Microphone is especially intriguing but unfortunately we didn't have the time or necessary equipment to test their capabilities. The Q-Connector simplifies connections between the motherboard and front panel ports (USB, audio, etc) while the Array Microphone is actually a directional microphone with noise surpression capabilities. And of course, there's the WiFi add-on and AP software for the WiFi equipped version of ASUS P5B Deluxe.

As you can see, the plethora of features and accesories have some impact on the layout. The most striking is definitely the room between the first PCI-E x16 slot and the DIMM slots - you'll most likely have to remove the graphics card if you want to have clear access to any DIMM modules. We think ASUS could've done things differently, since there is enough room on the far side of the DIMM slots. There's also the vertical placement of the WiFi hardware next to the back panel, but it shouldn't interfere with the graphics card. The SATA ports placement is very good, paralel to the PCI and PCI-E slots with color coding matching the cables (well, at least 4 of them). The laid-down IDE connector should allow more creative placement of IDE cables, especially for those concerned with internal case airflow.

Silent running is all the rage today, so ASUS decided to equip the P5B Deluxe with passive cooling for the northbridge, southbridge and some additional electrical components. However, ASUS is still kind enough to provide 5 fan headers (including one for the CPU), should you choose to have active cooling instead. They even throw in an additional fan you can use to cool the heatpipe's radiator heatsink.

Expansions and Add-Ons

The ASUS P5B Deluxe offers 3 PCI slots, 1 PCI-E x1 slot and 2 PCI-E x16 slot (1 is full x16, the other is actually x4 which is the norm for all Intel i965 chipset) for all your add-on needs. The two PCI-E x16 slots are Crossfire ready, so you should be able to use any ATI Crossfire enabled cards with this board. With single slot cards, your expansion options are likely to be limited to 2 PCI slots. With dual slot cards, we don't recommend using any of the available slots for add-ons, especially if you have cards with dual slot cooling side intakes, like the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro we're using.

Thankfully, with the exception of a good sound card, you'll likely won't find any reason to get an add-on card. The ASUS P5B Deluxe comes with two Gigabit capable LAN ports, 4 USB ports (plus another 2 ports on a bracket), 1 Firewire port (plus 1 port on a bracket), and the standard, serial (COM), PS/2 and audio ports. You'll also get coaxial SPDIF ports. The compromise: there is no printer (LPT) and optical SPDIF ports. Not that big of a deal really, since you can always connect the printer through a USB cable and use the integrated coax SPDIF. One nitpick we have is the inefficient use of brackets - why place the additional ports on two brackets instead of one? There is enough space to hold 2 USB ports and 1 Firewire port in a single bracket.

Tweaking and Overclocking Friendly

The ASUS P5B Deluxe comes with more than ehough BIOS settings to satisfy die-hard overclockers. Processor, PCI-Express slot, chipset, memory settings including clock, voltage and other setting are configurable. You can set them automatically or manually if you want. You can even save these settings into a profile - up to four profile are configurable. The many AI Features offered by the P5B Deluxe should be a boon for those new to overclocking, but many hardcore users will likely want manual settings and the ASUS P5B does not disappoint.

However, there are minor gripes we had with this board, but they are minor and if you can live with them, you have a really good board on your hands. Here they are:

• When opening the Health Monitor option in the BIOS, the board may take several seconds (nearly a minute or more in some cases). ASUS boards are the only ones with this 'feature'. We think this is absurd, fan detection shouldn't take that long.
• It would seem the ASUS P5B Deluxe CPU temperature monitoring is highly susceptible to errors. Our sample reported a temperature of 50 Celsius, while other boards report 35-37 Celsius with the same processor, settings and ambient temperature. It could be just a fluke, but some users have reported that this is a known fluke of P5B Deluxe.
• During testing, we repeatedly have audio dropouts / noise / distortion, usually noticeable during Windows entry to the desktop. The same also applies to running application that probes the system (CPU-Z) while playing an audio file in the background. We did use a very low PCI latency and this may contribute to the matter. No other boards exhibit this behaviour, so it may be related to the use of the Analod Devices AD1988B sound codec.

Generally a good, all around board. The ASUS P5B Deluxe offers good performance with lots of features, though price may be a limiting factor for some. However, for the price ASUS is asking, we'd like ASUS to offer a better package, preferably one with a more accurate / sturdy health monitoring solution and much better audio. Though some users may be tempted to choose the non-WiFi version, the price difference is usually not that significant.

Gigabyte P965-DQ6

Intel Pentium 4 / Core socket LGA-775
P965
PCI Express, PCI

Overall Score: 92 points



The full specification (taken from Gigabyte's website)

CPU
Supports Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme/ Intel® Pentium® D processor
Supports 1066/800/533 MHz FSB

Chipset
Northbridge: Intel® P965 Express Chipset
Southbridge: Intel® ICH8R

Memory
Supports DDR2 800/667/533 memory
Dual Channel architecture support up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots

Expansion Slots

• 2 x PCI Express X16 slot(x16, x4)
• 3 x PCI Express X1 slots
• 2 x PCI slots

Storage
Southbridge
6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

LAN
Gigabit LAN Controller (Marvell 8053)

Audio
Realtek ALC888DD 8-Channel Audio Codec

Unique Features

• Durability Enhanced- All Solid Capacitor Motherboard
• Silent Pipe Cooling
• Over-clocking Enhanced

Back Panel I/O Ports

• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 1 x RJ45 port
• 1 x COM port
• 1 x LPT port
• 6 x audio jacks
• 1 x IEEE1394
• 1 x Optical SPDIF OUT
• 1 x Coaxial SPDIF OUT
• PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse

Internal I/O Connectors

• 8 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s connector
• 1 x UDMA ATA 100/66/33 connector
• 1 x FDD connector
• 3 x USB 2.0/1.1 connectors (support 6 ports)
• 1 x audio pin header (support 8-Channel)
• 1 x S/PDIF In pin header
• 2 x IEEE1394 connector

Form Factor
ATX form factor, 30.5cm x 24.4cm

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