ASUS P5K Motherboard Review

Well I did it. I decided that after Christmas I would upgrade my main computer. The reason I decided to upgrade? I received a 300 gig SATA hard drive. My old ASUS P4B is about six years old. There is nothing wrong with the motherboard but it is at the end of it's upgrade path. I could upgrade the processor one more time to 3 GHz but why bother? So I ordered a ASUS P5K Deluxe motherboard. Ah but the story doesn't stop there. Another reason for upgrading the computer is I needed to write an E-Book on upgrading a computer. So I get to do both.

For the most part the ASUS P5K motherboard is top of the line, check the specifications for the complete run down. The benefits that sold me were the processor support for the Core 2 Quad up to 3.4 GHz. I didn't buy that processor for my upgrade but if I wanted to go to a Quad at 3 GHZ (the fastest currently available) I could do so with out any problems. I would have to upgrade my Operating System from 32 bit to 64 bit to accommodate the two more processors. Although ASUS touts that the 'Overclocking' facility built into the motherboard is the best I have yet to make it work reliably. This could be due to the fact that I have 800 MHz FSB memory and not 1066 FSB memory, or that I have a 2.2 GHz processor. I went with this instead of the Asus P5LD2 R2.0 mainly because of the memory, four slots vs 2 slots.

You need USB ports? This board has six on the rear port panel and two more for the front panel if your case has the accommodation. Do you need Firewire? There is one on the rear panel and accommodation for two more either on the rear or front of the computer. You need a port for your SATA external hard drive, there are two ports.

This board can handle up to 8 Gig of memory (four slots, single and dual channel capability), although XP and Vista 32 bit Operating Systems can only use 3 Gig, the 64 Bit versions will see all the memory you have installed.

It has 8 SATA interface ports, two are boot selectable, the other six can be used in a RAID configuration.

It has IDE support for two drives, hard drive or cd/dvd rom drives.

Networking, this board has three network adapters, two wired (1 GBPS) and one WiFi at 54MBPS. With XP you can bridge the two 1 Gig adapters for faster though put, be aware that if your connection is to a 10 or 100 MBPS device then that is what you will get for through put. (GBPS = Giga Bit Per Second)

One more thing that bothers me, it probably is this way for all newer motherboards, is that the mouse is USB, the keyboard is PS/2. For normal everyday operation that is fine. The problem is I have an Omni View 4 Port Autoswitch that I have three computers connected to. Because the mouse is USB when I switch between computers with the switch I loose functionality on the mouse.

Overall I think this is a very good motherboard. It does have it's draw backs and things that as an older motherboard user I need to get familiar with, like the mouse. And the 'Overclocking' that I need to figure out how to do, I should be able to get the 2.2 GHz up to at least 2.6 if not more with out causing any damage to the processor or the motherboard.

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