Information on this motherboard
Ive noticed that very few people own this motherboard. I tried to do research on it but very little information was around. Here is a link to Asustek's website.
http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=307&model=1399&modelmenu=1
My findings
After reading around what I can say is that in terms of overclockability, all the Asus P5B series of motherboards are very similar (though I have heard some bad stuff about the vanilla, P5B). In general though, it seems, that the Asus P5B-E, P5B Deluxe/WiFi, P5B-E Plus all perform similarly. Choose the motherboard that has the right functions/features for you.
Why the P5B-E Plus?
I chose the P5B-E Plus over the other variants as I did not want any heatpipe cooling at all. I intended right from the outset to watercool as many chips in the system as possible. Also the P5B-E Plus is a higher quality board than the P5B-E, which is similar in spec, whereby the Plus uses "Uses 100% All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors!" which should in theory, add to the stability of the system.
In terms of price the p5b-e plus is cheaper than the deluxe version of the motherboard. The plus also uses the much talked about C2 revision of Intel's 965 chipset. Perhaps this adds to the overclockability? At this time, we cant say for sure.
The Plan
My intention was to use it with:
Crucial 10th Anniversary Ram, 2GB
Intel Core2Duo E6600
Leadtek 7900GS HDCP
All this will be watercooled and overclocked as far as it will go.
Air Cooled at stock - very quiet
Before I installed all the watercooling blocks (which is very time-consuming and agravating when trying to stop a leak), I ran the board outside of the case, using stock cooling.
I upgraded from a P4 [email protected], watercooled system to this C2D. One thing that struck me when I did a test run of this system, everything stock, was just how quiet everything was. The noise created by the cpu fan was almost non-existent, the heatsinks on the North Bridge (NB) and South Bridge (SB) were passive and the fan on the 7900GS was also quiet. This goes to show just how far things have come. When running the cpu at stock speeds, I touched the cpu heatsink and it was cool to the touch. Im sure that a larger heatsink could run this cpu at stock, with no fan - great for HTPCs.
The idle CPU temp in this configuration was around 30C (measured by a program called "CoreTemp". This was when running the motherboard outside of a closed case.
I didnt bother overclocking the system at all in this configuration. Though I did underclock it and managed to run it at 1.2ghz. At this speed everything seemed surprisingly quick. In fact, I think a lot of the speed increases we have seen with these C2D systems might be down to the chipsets. At 1.2ghz for example, I was able to watch HD movies at a lower cpu usage than on my old [email protected]!
Anyway, onto the proper installation.
Installing the waterblock
Here is a picture of the cpu waterblock (Swiftech Apogee) installed:
A point to note is that when operating under air (everything stock), the northbridge was not getting hot at all - it was warm (not hot) to the touch. The southbridge though was getting very hot - so hot that I couldnt hold my finger to the heatsink for more than a few seconds.
This led me to remove the small southbridge passive heatsink and place onto it the larger heatsink that was cooling the northbridge. This solved the problem of a very hot southbridge (which I later found out when I ran the system in this configuration). The northbridge had its own chipset waterblock, which keeps the northbridge cooler than any heatsink and fan could ever do.
The pics below summarise this.
Take note of the difference in size between heatsinks - the NB heastink is gigantuan in comparison to the SB heatsink:
NB heatsink installed on the SB:
A plan view:
Here is a dark and dingy pic that I took after everything was installed in my case, hence it is difficult to see, but you can be assured that the block that you see is a DangerDen Z-Chipset waterblock cooling the NB chipset:
The final system was installed with the following equipment:
Asus P5b-E plus (NB cooled by DangerDen Z-Chip waterblock, SB cooled by NB heatsink)
Antec TruePower550
Leadtek 7900GS (watercooled by modded DangerDen NV68)
E6600 (cooled by Swiftech Apogee)
Crucial 10th Anniversary Ram, 2GB, PC5300
3 sata 7200rpm hard disks (2 HDs cooled be Koolance HD Waterblock)
2 Optical DVD drives
Watercooled at stock speeds
Things are obviously quieter now that I have done away with the cpu and video card fans. CPU temp while I type this is: 27C on both cores (compared to 30C when using stock cooling).
Stability
Everthing has been nice and stable. No erroneous happenings. Everything running nice and smooth. 3dmark06 ran nicely for 8hrs last night. Not a hiccup. At stock though, I would expect nothing less.
Overclocking
This is the best part of this post; unfortunately, I havent started to overclock.
Edit: Im at 3420mhz right now. For more details see the following thread:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=8569910#post8569910
Final thoughts
As yet its difficult to say how good this motherboard is. I bought this motherboard to overclock and I shall begin that in the next few days. What I can say is that when compared to my old [email protected], this system (even at 1.2ghz, ie. half the stock speed of the cpu) was faster than my P4 when playing HD movies.
Another great thing is the price - I paid around £104 for it, which is cheaper than the Deluxe version. You also get the new stepping of the 965 chipset. On top of which you get the basic cooling on the NB and SB, which is great if you intend to use custom cooling systems on these chipsets.
If you have any other questions that you would like to know about this motherboard, feel free to ask and I shall update this original post to include answers to those questions.
Ive noticed that very few people own this motherboard. I tried to do research on it but very little information was around. Here is a link to Asustek's website.
http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=307&model=1399&modelmenu=1
My findings
After reading around what I can say is that in terms of overclockability, all the Asus P5B series of motherboards are very similar (though I have heard some bad stuff about the vanilla, P5B). In general though, it seems, that the Asus P5B-E, P5B Deluxe/WiFi, P5B-E Plus all perform similarly. Choose the motherboard that has the right functions/features for you.
Why the P5B-E Plus?
I chose the P5B-E Plus over the other variants as I did not want any heatpipe cooling at all. I intended right from the outset to watercool as many chips in the system as possible. Also the P5B-E Plus is a higher quality board than the P5B-E, which is similar in spec, whereby the Plus uses "Uses 100% All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors!" which should in theory, add to the stability of the system.
In terms of price the p5b-e plus is cheaper than the deluxe version of the motherboard. The plus also uses the much talked about C2 revision of Intel's 965 chipset. Perhaps this adds to the overclockability? At this time, we cant say for sure.
The Plan
My intention was to use it with:
Crucial 10th Anniversary Ram, 2GB
Intel Core2Duo E6600
Leadtek 7900GS HDCP
All this will be watercooled and overclocked as far as it will go.
Air Cooled at stock - very quiet
Before I installed all the watercooling blocks (which is very time-consuming and agravating when trying to stop a leak), I ran the board outside of the case, using stock cooling.
I upgraded from a P4 [email protected], watercooled system to this C2D. One thing that struck me when I did a test run of this system, everything stock, was just how quiet everything was. The noise created by the cpu fan was almost non-existent, the heatsinks on the North Bridge (NB) and South Bridge (SB) were passive and the fan on the 7900GS was also quiet. This goes to show just how far things have come. When running the cpu at stock speeds, I touched the cpu heatsink and it was cool to the touch. Im sure that a larger heatsink could run this cpu at stock, with no fan - great for HTPCs.
The idle CPU temp in this configuration was around 30C (measured by a program called "CoreTemp". This was when running the motherboard outside of a closed case.
I didnt bother overclocking the system at all in this configuration. Though I did underclock it and managed to run it at 1.2ghz. At this speed everything seemed surprisingly quick. In fact, I think a lot of the speed increases we have seen with these C2D systems might be down to the chipsets. At 1.2ghz for example, I was able to watch HD movies at a lower cpu usage than on my old [email protected]!
Anyway, onto the proper installation.
Installing the waterblock
Here is a picture of the cpu waterblock (Swiftech Apogee) installed:
A point to note is that when operating under air (everything stock), the northbridge was not getting hot at all - it was warm (not hot) to the touch. The southbridge though was getting very hot - so hot that I couldnt hold my finger to the heatsink for more than a few seconds.
This led me to remove the small southbridge passive heatsink and place onto it the larger heatsink that was cooling the northbridge. This solved the problem of a very hot southbridge (which I later found out when I ran the system in this configuration). The northbridge had its own chipset waterblock, which keeps the northbridge cooler than any heatsink and fan could ever do.
The pics below summarise this.
Take note of the difference in size between heatsinks - the NB heastink is gigantuan in comparison to the SB heatsink:
NB heatsink installed on the SB:
A plan view:
Here is a dark and dingy pic that I took after everything was installed in my case, hence it is difficult to see, but you can be assured that the block that you see is a DangerDen Z-Chipset waterblock cooling the NB chipset:
The final system was installed with the following equipment:
Asus P5b-E plus (NB cooled by DangerDen Z-Chip waterblock, SB cooled by NB heatsink)
Antec TruePower550
Leadtek 7900GS (watercooled by modded DangerDen NV68)
E6600 (cooled by Swiftech Apogee)
Crucial 10th Anniversary Ram, 2GB, PC5300
3 sata 7200rpm hard disks (2 HDs cooled be Koolance HD Waterblock)
2 Optical DVD drives
Watercooled at stock speeds
Things are obviously quieter now that I have done away with the cpu and video card fans. CPU temp while I type this is: 27C on both cores (compared to 30C when using stock cooling).
Stability
Everthing has been nice and stable. No erroneous happenings. Everything running nice and smooth. 3dmark06 ran nicely for 8hrs last night. Not a hiccup. At stock though, I would expect nothing less.
Overclocking
This is the best part of this post; unfortunately, I havent started to overclock.
Edit: Im at 3420mhz right now. For more details see the following thread:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=8569910#post8569910
Final thoughts
As yet its difficult to say how good this motherboard is. I bought this motherboard to overclock and I shall begin that in the next few days. What I can say is that when compared to my old [email protected], this system (even at 1.2ghz, ie. half the stock speed of the cpu) was faster than my P4 when playing HD movies.
Another great thing is the price - I paid around £104 for it, which is cheaper than the Deluxe version. You also get the new stepping of the 965 chipset. On top of which you get the basic cooling on the NB and SB, which is great if you intend to use custom cooling systems on these chipsets.
If you have any other questions that you would like to know about this motherboard, feel free to ask and I shall update this original post to include answers to those questions.
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