ASUS P5K3 Premium and Deluxe
We should note that P5K3 Premium is the heaviest motherboards
we have ever held in hands. That is understandable: along with the
massive radiators on the chipset and the power supply module, there
have been added two memory modules equipped with own massive radiators.
And of course all the radiators are interlinked with heat pipes - as
many as six! On the reverse side as well, there is a couple of
radiators.
Against the Premium, the Deluxe version does not look as
impressive, nor we can call its cooling system weak or middling: the
main radiators are large enough and interlinked with two heat pipes.
When assembling systems based on the Deluxe board, the only
issue is blocking the DIMM slot latches by a PCI Express video card.
For known reasons, there is no such issue in the Premium version.
No other problems will come up for the assembly operator. The
power connectors are installed over the edges of the board: 24-pin - on
the bottom edge, with a 8-pin on the right-hand. We note that the
boards have retained a backward compatibility to the "old" PSUs, e.g.
with 20+4 cables. At the same time, the unused pins of the additional
connector are closed with a plastic lid:
You can vividly see some
slight difference in the power supply module
Near the CPU socket, there is a 4-pin CPU_FAN connector for a
matching cooler.
Besides that, there are four more 3-pin connectors: CHA_FAN1
- near the rear panel, with CHA_FAN2 to CHA_FAN4 on the bottom edge of
the board.
On the north bridge of the Premium model, there is a radiator
connected to the radiators on power supply module with two heat pipes
(one per each radiator). Also, using the heat pipe the heat from the
south bridge is transferred to the north bridge. Note that on both
radiators on the power supply module you can install turbine fans which
come as bundled items.
Cooling of the chipset on P5K3 Deluxe has been implemented
better: heat from the north bridge is transferred to the radiators of
the power supply module by means of two heat pipes (two per each
radiator). The radiators of the power supply module also allow
installing an additional fan, but unfortunately there is only one in
the bundle.
Under the north bridge of the Premium model, there are two
DDR3-1333 modules of 1 GB capacity each. The box cover says the modules
can be overclocked to 1600 MHz, and no word is said regarding that in
the printed user's manual. In fact, one of *.pdf files from asus.com
states possible overclocking up to 1500 MHz.
That engineers at ASUS enabled only two DIMM slots allowed
increasing the width of the radiators substantially. Moreover, one more
radiator is installed on the reverse side of the motherboard:
As regards the Deluxe board, all is traditional here: four
slots divided into two groups of two slots in each. The first two slots
refer to the first controller channel, with the other two to the second
controller.
Note that P5K3 Deluxe supports DDR2-800/1066/1333 memory, and
the maximum memory capacity makes 8 GB. Once voltage is applied to the
board, a large green LED in the bottom-left corner of the board lights
up.
On each of the boards, there are two PCI Express x16 slots
(both with latches) which are meant for video cards.
Because of the inner limitations of P35 chipset, merely 2 or 4
PCI Express bus lanes are allocated to the second PCI Express x16 slot.
Apart from the listed slots, the boards use three "regular" PCI slots
as well as two PCI Express x1 slots on each.
Both the motherboards use the ICH9R south bridge with a
radiator. Therefore, the boards support 6 SerialATA II ports, which
allows merging disks into RAID arrays of levels 0,1,5, and 10.
Besides, two extra SerialATA II devices can be plugged in to
the JMB363 controller by JMicron (the chip is in the upper left corner
of the board).
Interestingly, the PCB of the Premium board is made in China, whereas
that of the Deluxe version - in Taiwan
Both the ports are brought to the rear panel of the board. The
same controller provides support for one ParallelATA channel.
Therefore, as many as 10 hard disks (8 SATA + 2 PATA) altogether can be
plugged in to the motherboards.
Then, the boards use only 10 USB 2.0 ports (of 12 supported by
ICH9R). Six ports of them are on the rear panel, with 4 more plugged in
with plates (the board comes bundled with 1 plate for 2 ports). The
reduction in the number of USB ports is related to the installation of
a Wi-Fi module.
Besides, the motherboards support the IEEE1394 ("Firewire").
For that, there is an additional FX3227-100 controller made by Agere.
Therefore, the boards offer support for 2 Firewire ports each:
one mounted on the rear panel, with the other one connected with a
plate (available in the package bundle).
Then, both the motherboards offer 8-channel integrated Intel
High Definition Audio, with AD1988B chip used as the codec. However,
the Premium board supports the AI Audio2, whereas the Deluxe doesn't.
A few words on the network support: both the boards use two
high-speed LAN controllers: RTL8110SC (Gigabit Ethernet) connected to
the PCI bus,
and Marvell 88E8056 (Gigabit Ethernet) connected to the PCI
Express (x1) bus.
The rear panel of the motherboards is of quite nonstandard
configuration, albeit familiar through the previous reviews:
As we can see, engineers at ASUS have completely given up
support for the LPT port and COM ports (one COM port is implemented
with a plate but it is missing in the bundle). Missing is also a PS/2
connector to plug in a mouse. On the other hand, USB 2.0 ports are in
abundance; there are two SerialATA II and one Firewire, as well as an
optical and coaxial SP-DIF output.
The boards have the only CLRTC jumper - to clear the CMOS
settings (near the battery).
Now on to the BIOS settings.
 |
Top Stories: |
 |
 |
|
MoBo:
| |
|
|
VGA Card:
|
|
|
|
CPU & Memory:
|
|
