P5K Deluxe.....First Impressions

Well, just got the board up and running and then my water pump died before I could overclock at all!!! So, on air, I am giving it a whirl. Temps are definitely going to hold me back with this overclocking beast. I cannot wait to exploit the hell out of this thing.

Interesting enough, I am up to 2.5ghz (on my e6400) with only 1.24volts??
I had the voltage set to auto and it was giving out 1.33v, and that was bringing my load temps with Prime 95 to 60c. Now they are at 57. Should it be possible to be stable with a 400mhz overclock while undervolted???
This will be interesting to watch when my new MCP655 comes.

I have noticed a few issues that are strange when compared with my old
P5W DH. First of all, I have 2gb Crucial 6400 (800mhz) RAM. When set to this frequency, the board will not boot. I suppose it doesn't like the strap, but I have to select the next step up (like 893) for it to boot. No big deal, just strange. (I have updated the BIOS already...)

Second, the sound seems a little poppy compared to the Realtek on the 975 board. Also of note, there are other little nuances such as windows in Prime95 minimizing a with a slight hesitation that didn't happen with the 975 board either. And oh, btw, if you are expecting the little fan that cools the CPU voltage reg. that was included with the P5W DH for use when watercooling....it doesn't come with this board. Don't know how really important that is.

There are other little things that I can't recall at the moment that are different, but this board is going to be a very good platform for overclocking for a while to come.
Oh, and by the way, does anyone know how to eliminate the JMicron screen at bootup??? That's going to be a little tedious.

So far I am quite pleased with this board. The BIOS is a little confusing as there are MANY more selections to choose from. Only time will tell if they all offer any benefit or are useless additions.

I will post a better review after I have all the tools to work with, and include some screen shots. At this time I cannot reccomend or not reccomend this board due to lack of data, but lets just say that I am very excited about the potential!

Man I agree, the onboard sound sucks. And yeah the BIOS is kinda confusing, hell I'm up 486FSB already and I still dont know what Over-Charging Mode, CPU Voltage Reference, CPU PLL Voltage, and North Bridge Voltage Reference are for.

Regarding your issues with your mem, thats wierd. Anyway, goodluck! Hope you you get you pump back so we could see your results

I really like mine so far. I don't have a working floppy so any major overclocking isn't happening till I get a new one. (need to flash BIOS) CPUz for some reason reads memory as 32-5-2-12, lol. Also noticed vdroop is a lot better on this board than on my P5B-D.

@inkfx: if you've got a flash drive, you can flash using it too, just enter the bios with the files on the flash drive, then run ez flash,

@stilleto havn't messed with the onboard sound much, but they always seem to suck, if you're not using the jmicron, it's listed under onboard devices, should be able to turn it off, the boot issues are def wierd, havn't had any probs with my ram, as far as undervolting, most chips will overclock and undervolt at the same time, run prime testing to be sure though

toddm27 said:

@inkfx: if you've got a flash drive, you can flash using it too, just enter the bios with the files on the flash drive, then run ez flash,

@stilleto havn't messed with the onboard sound much, but they always seem to suck, if you're not using the jmicron, it's listed under onboard devices, should be able to turn it off, the boot issues are def wierd, havn't had any probs with my ram, as far as undervolting, most chips will overclock and undervolt at the same time, run prime testing to be sure though

Click to expand...

Sound on the DH was actually pretty decent....

The jmocron is the only way to use the ide port for dvdrw, etc., or else I would DEFINITELY turn it off.

Yeah, I ran dual prime95 for half an hour on both cores at 1.24v with no error.
That is something I could never have done with the 975x boards. I am liking that! The strangest thing is that this board just seems....well, it lags a bit compared to the old P5W DH, if that makes any sense....It actually performs better(slightly) in all benchmarks but it takes 7 min longer to install windows and doesn't have the "pep" that I was used to. Perhaps I am being overly critical or hypersensitive to a new setup

Stilletto said:

Sound on the DH was actually pretty decent....

The jmocron is the only way to use the ide port for dvdrw, etc., or else I would DEFINITELY turn it off.

Yeah, I ran dual prime95 for half an hour on both cores at 1.24v with no error.
That is something I could never have done with the 975x boards. I am liking that! The strangest thing is that this board just seems....well, it lags a bit compared to the old P5W DH, if that makes any sense....It actually performs better(slightly) in all benchmarks but it takes 7 min longer to install windows and doesn't have the "pep" that I was used to. Perhaps I am being overly critical or hypersensitive to a new setup

Click to expand...

ahh yeah, I'm not running any ide drives, so jmicron got turned off, as far as the lag, I havn't noticed it, running great on my setup

toddm27 said:

@inkfx: if you've got a flash drive, you can flash using it too, just enter the bios with the files on the flash drive, then run ez flash,

Click to expand...

I was under the impression you still needed a floppy. DOH! My dad has the flash drive on him and he is at work so this will have to wait till he gets home. Thanks.

Only one things bothering me, did the Asus splash page change between the original BIOS and the new one? I dont remember

Anyway, the board rocks! l like it better than the P5B. vDroop is very minimal
with the voltage damper feature.

@inkfx, i'm pretty sure you could still clock >450 with just the original BIOS. Never had a big issue except for that cpu-z isnt getting the memory timings right.