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Brolloks EVGA P55 LE review

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Brolloks

Benching Senior on Siesta, Premium Member #8
Joined
Dec 26, 2006
Location
Land of Long Horns
Picked up the new P55 LE from EVGA today. A few reasons why I'm starting with this board...mainly 'cause I liked the X58 LE from EVGA quite a lot so I'd like to see how it compares with it's P55 brother. Also we have quite a few Giga boards here under review and Asus boards over at XS. As this is a midrange board it would be good to see how it fairs against the Giga UD4P and Asus P7P55D Pro which falls in the same price class.

From a practical point of view what caught my eye when I browsed the shelves at Frys is that the board has mounting holes for BOTH the LGA 1156 as well as for 775, so no need to buy a new bracket set :D

The egg and Frys have put a price tag of $169 to this board, you save shipping at the egg and have to pay tax at Frys off course.

Hardware for this review:

Motherboard - EVGA P55 LE

CPU - Intel i7-860

Cooling - TRUE 120 (ambient at around 15 C)

GPU - GTX 216 (later with 4890 CF)

RAM - G.Skill 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 CL8

HDD - WD Raptor 74 GB 16mb

Note - None of the above hardware is sponsored by any manufactuerer or donated for this review.
 

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More pics
 

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Pics of CPu and socket
 

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I also will compare this to the Foxconn Katana GTI P55 which caught my attention...same price class.
 
worthless without pics! :p

im wondering how much the MATX P55 is going to run.
 
wait, there's brackets for the true out already, or did you rig something up? I thought they hadn't shipped yet?

no need to rig something as he stated the board has LGA775 mounting holes. very few boards have both mounting holes and this is one of them.
 
worthless without pics! :p

im wondering how much the MATX P55 is going to run.

Hey, I have a day job too ;)

Coming up :)

Edit...you can see how close the 1156 and the 775 mounting holes are, why on earth they had to go make new holes for this platform beats me...the socket is about the same size as the 775 in any case?
 
Edit...you can see how close the 1156 and the 775 mounting holes are, why on earth they had to go make new holes for this platform beats me...the socket is about the same size as the 775 in any case?


Mo money.
I like that they put 775 mounting holes on there.
Pretty considerate for the consumer..
 
Hey, I have a day job too ;)

Coming up :)

Edit...you can see how close the 1156 and the 775 mounting holes are, why on earth they had to go make new holes for this platform beats me...the socket is about the same size as the 775 in any case?
yea the socket seems about the same size. the hold down seems a touch bigger though. interesting the cpu is the same size or touch bigger then LGA775 huh?

I like that they put 775 mounting holes on there.
Pretty considerate for the consumer..
yea sure is nice, i can find only two MATX boards with LGA775 holes as well. the Asrock board and the upcoming EVGA MATX p55 board. my 3 P55's should be here sometime next week...
 
Added pics of CPU and socket...a few things to note :

The LGA 775 mounting holes are not symetrical across the socket, reason being it is so close to the 1156 holes they could not align it, once again I am dumbfounded as to why the board manufactures chose a different mounting hole config for this socket.

Also your TRUE or similiar backplate will not fit, the three bolts keeping the socket bracket in place interferes with the backplate, I modified a Noctua cooler mounting set to mount the cooler.

Busy doing a fresh OS install on the raptor so will be posting benchioes tonight.
 
The LGA 775 mounting holes are not symetrical across the socket, reason being it is so close to the 1156 holes they could not align it, once again I am dumbfounded as to why the board manufactures chose a different mounting hole config for this socket.

i thought i was the only one that notice that... what they should have done is used LGA1136 holes and then add LGA775. i guess intel just wants to be difficult with us.... :bang head
 
First OC for the night, yeah I know all i7's can do it ;)

Few things I want to point out about the board. When you set the OC and exit the bios it runs untill the LED says "03" and then shuts down, it then restarts and boots normally. Now initially I thought that the OC had failed but it did not, so just for the users that come across that, reminds me of the old Abit P35 boards.

Also the board overvolts the CPU quite a bit, the voltage in th screenshot is actually 1.35v in the bios, idle it is 1.376 and then under load it jumps to 1.411 v which drives coretemp up close to 80C. It concerns me a bit this overvolting, might be nothing, too early to tell.

All voltages on auto except v-core and vdimm.

PS...the LED while in Windows shows the CPU temp, nice feature. Also the onboard reset button has a LED in the center that lights up according to HDD activity, the power button also has a LED that is lit when the system is running....small but neat features :).
 

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Nice start mate, looking forward to seeing how you get on.


The overvolting is a little odd though.



I am dumbfounded as to why the board manufactures chose a different mounting hole config for this socket.

.

They would have had to make the holes to fit the stock heat sink that comes with the cpu. As most pc's out there would use that.

My issue is not with the board manufactures, but with intel :mad:
The mounting holes on socket 1366 would have been just fine.
 
I did not have a very successfull night with this board, past 4.4 Ghz it behaves very unpredictable with random reboots or BSOD even at the slightest loads. I've tried all sorts of voltage combos. I am convinced it is the board and not the CPU, will pick up an Asus P7P55D Pro today just to confirm. I suspect the PWM's and reliative low voltage phases this board have, has something to do with this instability.
 
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