Feature rich and stable......for Q6600?

Hobgoblin · 5 Dec 2007 at 16:02

fair do's but you do see a lot more gigabytes havin problems atm. i know it can be put down to more people buying them but im still curious why everyone just ignores the foxconn. is it bad bios features?

ive googled and cant find any known problems with the thing (unlike the abit double boot issue for instance). the prices seem well placed and the layout is good. yet no-one buys them?

hobobob · 5 Dec 2007 at 16:41

Been looking at the PK5 for my new build and see to very good for functionality and clocking, at an excelent price.

But was wondering what is the difference between the PK5 Premium
and the PK5-E?

Big.Wayne · 5 Dec 2007 at 20:05

hobobob said:
what is the difference between the PK5 Premium
and the PK5-E?

The P5K-E is lacking a few simple features from the P5K-Premium WIFI/AP

Dual Gigabit LAN controllers

ASUS WiFi-AP Solo 54 Mbps IEEE 802.11g

One heatpipe that goes from the Southbridge > Northbridge > VRM's

Accessories: A 1 x 2-port USB2.0 / 1-port IEEE1394 module

There is one more difference between the two boards, but as its written in 'Marketing Speak' I'm not sure what this 'Black Pearl Special Edition' feature offers? :confused:

About the best suggestion I've heard about this 'Designed for water-cooling' is that the P5K Premium 'maybe' runs a little cooler than other boards in the range? (Water Cooled systems generally have hotter mobo PCBs due to the lack of fans?), I dunno, I mean it has a heatpipe but then do do a few other boards so I don't think its that, maybe ASUS Handpicks certain mobos that run cooler during testing? god knows lol!

hobobob · 5 Dec 2007 at 20:17

Cheers for that Big wayne top notch!!

WJA96 · 5 Dec 2007 at 20:42

Big.Wayne said:
About the best suggestion I've heard about this 'Designed for water-cooling' is that the P5K Premium 'maybe' runs a little cooler than other boards in the range? (Water Cooled systems generally have hotter mobo PCBs due to the lack of fans?), I dunno, I mean it has a heatpipe but then do do a few other boards so I don't think its that, maybe ASUS Handpicks certain mobos that run cooler during testing? god knows lol!

It has two G1/4 threaded holes in the Northbridge cooler to take barbs for water cooling. You basically get a pre-fitted water-block that's quite nice really.

Big.Wayne · 5 Dec 2007 at 22:24

I managed to find out what the 'Black Pearl Special Edition' thing is, thanks to the guys at VR-Zone

The difference that could be spotted would be the CPU area. Different inductors from the P5K Deluxe and Nikos MOSFETs are used on the P5K Premium. If you are sharp enough, you would notice a few additional capacitors placed around the board.

MOSFETs are found on the bottom of the P5K Deluxe. This can be a problem because there is no airflow to the bottom of the board, and things can get toasty down under when you crank up the speed. However, with the P5K Premium, everything has been placed on the top side only

Underside of P5K Deluxe reveals 8 MOSFETs

ASUS redesigned the circuitry and there are none of them on the P5K Premium

ASUS claimed lower operating temperatures, so we took a QX6700 lying around and clocked it up to 3.33GHz for a quick test by loading all the cores at 100%. After running for 15 minutes, the PWM area of the P5K Deluxe was not at all safe to touch. When we unplugged our components, the loose plastic sheet we placed underneath actually stuck to the board. Trying the same test on the P5K Premium returned better results. The PWM area was still hot, but it is noticeable that it is cooler than the P5K Deluxe.

Users online have shared their findings regarding the initial P5K Premium. The Premium was able to hold a quad core CPU at a higher clock than the Deluxe, while maintaining lower motherboard temperatures.

hobobob · 5 Dec 2007 at 22:46

Thanks very much for going to so much effort to find that out mate!

Looks like a PK5 premium is on the cards then. :cool:

Big.Wayne · 5 Dec 2007 at 22:54

Yeah no problems, I did want to uncover the 'mystery' myself actually,

I intended to buy the cheapest 'quality' ASUS P35 mobo I could find, the P5K Vanilla pretty much fitted the bill but there were one or two things it didn't have, no RAID and no ASUS 8-Phase Power Design.

After reading tons I could see that the P5K-E WIFI/AP did everything I wanted and for under a ton, not bad.

Personally I don't feel like paying any more to get the Premium as thats almost double the price of the P5K Vanilla that I originally intended to buy lol!

[edit]These are the extra features I got by choosing the P5K-E/WIFI over the P5K Vanilla, cost me an additional £22 which seems worth it to me

- ASUS 8-Phase Power Design (Instead of 3-Phase)
- Black PCB (Instead of Vanilla)
- 6 x INTEL SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (instead of 4x)
- Supports RAID 0,1, 5 and 10
- ADI® AD1988B 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC (instead of Realtek ALC 883)
- 2 x External SATA
- 16 Mb Flash ROM BIOS (instead of 8MB)
- 4 x Chassis Fan connector (instead of 2x)
- Oh yeah and WIFI lol

2Drunk2Funk · 6 Dec 2007 at 19:39

It's not under a ton, its £116.99 ex Vat when I looked, price been hiked up ?

Big.Wayne · 6 Dec 2007 at 20:30

Big.Wayne said:
the P5K-E WIFI/AP did everything I wanted and for under a ton, not bad.

2Drunk2Funk said:
It's not under a ton, its £116.99 ex Vat when I looked, price been hiked up ?

No your confusing two different motherboards

Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP

£99.86 inc VAT

Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP

£137.46 inc VAT

tsinc80697 · 7 Dec 2007 at 01:54

Great boards, but if they die or go wrong, Asus are terrible with RMA's.
Hard to get hold of initially and then they take forever with the RMA!
Think my P5K Deluxe might be going soon as the audio has stopped working, I would RMA it but I have been waiting 2 weeks for a striker extreme.

Big.Wayne · 7 Dec 2007 at 02:03

Good to know, Good customer support is an important part of a purchase. I would have thought that you would have sent the board back to the etailor you bought it from and not ASUS? (for the first year at least?).

I've owned several ASUS motherboards and I have yet to run into any problems, they are very high quality and built like tanks.

At this time I have about 8 ASUS motherboards running in different clients machines and I've yet to hear a peep from anyone. Thats the reason I use these boards because they have always worked great for me.

For the record I also have a few ABIT motherboards running in Servers and again they run rock solid.

Actually I've never had a faulty motherboard, there were times when I *thought* the motherboard was faulty but it always turned out to be another component.