P5K/P5K3 Deluxe Layout and Overclocking

Layout (cont’d)

The expansion slot area layout is very standard. The only changes ASUS makes is lowering the two PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slots down one slot so long video cards don’t make contact with the memory slots. There are three PCI slots and another two PCI Express x1 slots.

Depending on the video card you use, one or two of those slots may become unusable. Usually PCI Express x1 slots are to the right of PEG slots because they are much more rarely used then PCI slots. Only some TV tuners and Ethernet cards come in the PCI Express flavor. The other types of expansion cards, such as sound and physics cards are PCI. If you don’t use additional cards however, there will be no problem.

ASUS employs a standard set of controllers to add features to the P5K Deluxe boards. The JMicro SATA controller adds two extra SATA ports. ASUS has two eSATA ports on the back panel and 4 onboard, all controlled by the ICH9 Southbridge. The JMicro controller adds another two for a total of 6 ports onboard. Like the Gigabyte boards, the ASUS P5K Deluxe boards use a Realtek controller to control the wireless LAN card on the motherboards rear panel. The two Ethernet jacks are controlled by the ICH9. ASUS uses an Agere Firewire controller for one external port on the back panel, and one internal port in the form of a motherboard header. Finally, a Winbond chip monitors the board’s sensors.




ASUS does just about everything right with the P5K Deluxe boards’ layouts. The space is not cluttered with many connections. Rather, they are spread along all along the edges of the board. The headers are clearly marked and have edges around them so cables stay tight. In general, there is a lot of space to work with. The only thing we saw that could be improved is the IDE port placement. Instead of being flush with a side edge, the port is parallel to the bottom edge which means cables would have to be twisted towards the drives on the side. This would result in worse airflow and a greater mess.


ASUS should have put the port on the side edge, like all its other ports. This is the only fault of the P5K Deluxe and P5K3 Deluxe layouts.


If you look at the P5K Deluxe and P5K3 Deluxe from a yard or two away, you might notice the different colored memory slots. But they’re the same length and shape. So why the different colored slots? First, the groove in the slot is moved slightly to support DDR3. An even closer inspection would reveal the two labels at the middle of each slot. One says 1.5V and the other 1.8V. That is the standard memory voltage for DDR3 and DDR2 respectively. Of course performance RAM will use more, but the base specs are on the slot. That is the only difference of the two P5K Deluxe boards.


The rear panel is one of the most useful ones ever made. There are six USB ports, two Ethernet jacks, two eSATA ports, and even Firewire. ASUS even has room for the standard set of 8 channel audio with analog and digital outs. To top that off, ASUS has an integrated wireless LAN card on the back. You really cannot get much better than that.

Overclocking

We made an early guess that these P5K Deluxe boards may just surpass our current overclocking king, ASUS’s own Striker Extreme. For one board, this came true. The ASUS P5K Deluxe hit 541MHz FSB, 4MHz higher then the Striker Extreme. Overclocking was very straightforward, despite no debugging LCD or any other visual tools. The ASUS P5K3 didn’t fare quite as well. It maxed out at 525MHz, which puts it at #4 overclocking of all the boards we have tested. Both boards were easy to overclock. There are a few tweaking options unique to the P35 chipset, but these should be no problem to even novice overclockers.