It was almost a year ago that Intel introduced the first Core 2 Duo processors into the market, marking the beginning of the end for the very well-regarded AMD Athlon 64.

Along with the Core 2 Duo came the Intel P965 Express chipset designed for mainstream and high-end motherboards. The P965 was meant to replace the i945 chipset and we can safely say today that it has done so successfully. Hoping for such continued success, Intel announced a P965 replacement last month. The new P35 chipset features updated processor and memory support, along with a few new key features that we will be talking about in this article.

ASUS has really embraced the Intel P35 quickly, as they currently offer eight unique motherboards based on the chipset. The ASUS P5K Deluxe comes in two flavors, while the standard version we have here today supports DDR2 memory, there is also a version that exclusively supports DDR3 memory, known as the P5K3 Deluxe. Both motherboards share the exact same PCB design with slight alterations to the cooling design and of course different memory DIMMs. Today we are testing the P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition, which currently has a retail value of $250, making this a high-end product.

View: ASUS P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition review @ TechSpot


There are 14 additional comments
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(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by +Beastage on 04 Jul 2007 - 11:24
no SLI tho... Intel are weird with this, ATi+AMD backstabbed them and yet they still support crossfire... lucky for AMD I guess.
Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by Cephas on 04 Jul 2007 - 13:12
For SLI support from Intel, wait for the X38 (successor to the 975X). It'll be out in 1-2 months.
Quote this comment #1.2 Posted by Croquant on 04 Jul 2007 - 22:17
Don't worry, Asus makes plenty of SLI boards. Check out the Striker Extreme.
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&...amp;modelmenu=1
(5 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by Malbojia on 04 Jul 2007 - 12:35
I bought a P5K for my second system. Was a nightmare to get this board running. I suffered from the "System Chassis Intrusion Detected" Halting System. What made it worse is that this chipset uses the AMI bios with no option in it to bypass case open warning or even have a Halt on all errors with exceptions.

I spent about a day just doing different methods to get the jumper on the pins that short this feature to turn off.
I rma'ed it. Received another board to only have it doing this same problem a week later.

Whats sad is is that reading the asus forums you start to uncover alot more problems with the P5 series in general. Had a buddy who did a valid bios flash with the right bios version on a P5NSLI-E next to me at work. Only for it to stop posting on the 3 rd boot.

I've been using asus boards since the Asus-P5A socket 7 series. I'll have to see how the quality gets in the future.
Quote this comment #2.1 Posted by Cephas on 04 Jul 2007 - 13:08
I have a P5K and it works great. I had the "Chassis Intruded" crap the first time I powered it on, but after restarting I never saw it again. The only fault with this board is it has pretty bad vdroop (overclocked vcore drops under load), but the Deluxe doesn't have this problem.
Quote this comment #2.2 Posted by RAINMAN on 04 Jul 2007 - 14:01
have it and its great, there is a really easy pencil mod to eliminate or lower vdroop.
Quote this comment #2.3 Posted by +chconline on 04 Jul 2007 - 16:59
Quote - (RAINMAN said @ #2.2)
have it and its great, there is a really easy pencil mod to eliminate or lower vdroop.



Or you can just enable CPU Voltage Damper in the BIOS.
Quote this comment #2.4 Posted by RAINMAN on 04 Jul 2007 - 17:35
right, i forgot to mention i have the vanilla board where the damping doesn't work.
Quote this comment #2.5 Posted by -DanNY- on 05 Jul 2007 - 12:43
Quote - (Malbojia said @ #2)
I bought a P5K for my second system. Was a nightmare to get this board running. I suffered from the "System Chassis Intrusion Detected" Halting System. What made it worse is that this chipset uses the AMI bios with no option in it to bypass case open warning or even have a Halt on all errors with exceptions.

I spent about a day just doing different methods to get the jumper on the pins that short this feature to turn off.
I rma'ed it. Received another board to only have it doing this same problem a week later.

Whats sad is is that reading the asus forums you start to uncover alot more problems with the P5 series in general. Had a buddy who did a valid bios flash with the right bios version on a P5NSLI-E next to me at work. Only for it to stop posting on the 3 rd boot.

I've been using asus boards since the Asus-P5A socket 7 series. I'll have to see how the quality gets in the future.


Ive delt with the Asus P5 Series since they came out, and in terms of overclocking capabilities and heat resistance they are extremely good, especially for moderate video-gamers. For my clients P5B-Deluxe setup, I used a P180 R1 Chassis, and stuck on the board a Zalman 120 Copper for cooling, DDR2 667 2G OCZ, and was able to overclock the installed E6400 at 20% when i ran my tests and it all passed . For the price they are definitly well worth it!
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by Genius on 04 Jul 2007 - 15:30
hm, i i like the support for 45nm processors, but i'm sure that when they are out, we'll see some even better motherboards optimized specifacally for those
Quote this comment #3.1 Posted by toadeater on 04 Jul 2007 - 22:11
Quote - (Genius said @ #3)
hm, i i like the support for 45nm processors, but i'm sure that when they are out, we'll see some even better motherboards optimized specifacally for those


There won't be any major changes until 2Q08 when Intel releases Nehalem. The X38 chipset, which will support 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and PCI 2.0 is due out soon, that's about it. Maybe Nvidia or AMD will come up with something, but Barcelona isn't something most consumers will want to buy.

Here's a photo of an X38 board:

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_g...i=161565,00.jpg
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by Croquant on 04 Jul 2007 - 19:02
Nice backplane design. Six USB, one PS/2 Keyboard (no PS/2 Mouse), SPIDF out, Two Gb ethernet RJ-45, One Firewire 400, Two e-Sata, six-port audio, Wi-Fi ant. port.
Since a lot of keyboards are still PS/2-only they pretty much had to keep the PS/2 keyboard port, which is fine. I'm glad they replaced the PS/2 mouse port for two USB ports, though. Now that's using the noggin. And they staggar-spced the USB port, too. That's great for people who have extra-wide USB devices that connect directly to the port without a cable.

The rest of the design is fairly standard for ASUS.

If you want one, get the P5K3 instead: It's the exact same board, but it has a better heatpipe on it.
http://techgage.com/viewimg/?img=/reviews/...5%20Motherboard

Last edited by Croquant on 04 Jul 2007 - 19:08
Quote this comment #4.1 Posted by Cephas on 05 Jul 2007 - 02:11
... and P5K3 takes DDR3 instead of DDR2.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by dangel on 05 Jul 2007 - 07:51
I've got one of these and it's excellent - 3.6ghz with a 6600 C2D and 4gig of Geil RAM
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