Item: ASUS P5E3 Deluxe - fully-loaded and ready to fly
Author: Tarinder Sandhu

Review: ASUS P5E3 Deluxe - fully-loaded and ready to fly

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The ASUS P5E3 Deluxe is based on Intel's recently-released Penryn-supporting X38 performance chipset that improves upon the present P35 by providing full-bandwidth PCIe gen 2.0 support, XMP memory profiles for easy overclocking, and an optimised northbridge that's particularly suited to ramping the FSB up.

ASUS has taken the chipset and grafted on a number of value-adding extras. Of particular note are EPU, Express Gate, integrated 802.11n WiFi, and a third mechanical x16 PCIe slot. The board's layout is good, all things considered, and the BIOS and bundle are excellent.

We'd usually temper such praise with the slap-in-the-face realisation that the board's online price equates to a king's ransom. In this case that remains true, with the P5E3D's £198 (including VAT) pricing enough to deter most users.

Is this the ultimate board for your Intel LGA775 adventures, then? The answer is no, and the reasoning lies with the underlying chipset above all else. We'd love to see truly independent CPU-to-RAM settings, SLI support - if it ever comes - would be great, and the huge price premium for quality DDR3 makes an upgrade to X38 an expensive business.

ASUS has produced a quality motherboard based on a chipset with a few too many limitations, as far as enthusiasts are concerned. If you can live with them this needs to go on your shortlist.

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ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi

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The ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi is currently available for around £198 here.

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At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of ASUS' representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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It is certainly a very expensive device, but if you are very keen on wireless ‘N’ support then you save around £20-30 on a wireless card. The sound codec is very good (as it is on my Asus mobo - Creative's retarded driver team seems to have an issue with 64bit Vista + 4GB RAM), so you may do without a seperate sound card.

Basically what I'm saying is that mobos are more expensive than they were but they offer more features than ever. The question is whether or not these features will be used. How many will make use of that last x4 PCIe slot for example.

I actually think that very high end Asus boards might benefit from an extra couple of SATA ports. Potential overkill I know but I only have one spare at the moment - for me the eSATA is currently redundant.

Pretty good summary, DeSean.

The problem is one of integration. You will need to replace the entire motherboard if one feature was to fail.