The Intel P35 Chipset Motherboard Round-Up – Abit, ASUS, Foxconn

ASUS P5K Deluxe Specs and Layout

The Asus P5K Deluxw WiFi-AP Edition is next up on the block. This board is similiar in many ways to the Blitz Formula board, especially in the area of the BIOS, so we will not repeat with great detail the similaraties. Let’s start with the specs…

As you can see, this board is also a very attractive board, and sports a copper heatpipe, but without the water cooling ability of the Blitz board. The layout is clean and easy to navigate.

The top right corner of the board reveals our DDRII slots. This board supports up to 8GB of DDRII memory at speeds of 667/800 and 1066. In reference to the DDRII 1066 support, just like with the Blitz Formula board, Asus says that is has designed this board to support this speed.

We also have out floppy and 24-pin power connector here, along with the copper heatsink on the northbridge.

The bottom right gives us our six SATA2 ports that are powered by the southbridge, and allow for running RAID 0/1/5/10. We also see the IDE connector here, which is powered by a Jmicron JMB363 PATA and SATA controller. A difference here when compared to the Blitz board is that the P5K board has a traditional upright placement of the SATA ports.

The bottom left of the board is where we find our slots for any add-on cards. This board gives you three legacy PCI slots, two x1 PCI-E slots, and two x16 slots that have the ability to run a Crossfire setup. When using bothe slots, the black x16 slot only runs at 4x, unlike the Blitz board, which has the Crosslink chips to run an 8×8 config.

Audio is supported by the ADI AD1988B 8-channel High Definition Audio chip.

Dual gigabit Lan is powered by two Marvell 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit LAN controllers.

Firewire is handled by the Agere FW322 1394a controller.

The top left gives us our CPU socket. The P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP supports up to a 1066 fsb chip. The 8-pin power connector is tucked nicely away at the top of the board near the edge.

The back I/O panal gives us quite a bit on this board. You have included a keyboard PS/2 input, Coaxial, Optical S/PDIF outs, 6 USb 2.0 inputs, our two gigabit lan jacks, and our firewire. Also, on this board, which is NOT on the Blitz Formula are two eSATA ports, and a wireless lan setup. Take a closer look at the card that handles the wlan.

Wlan is powered by the Realtek RTL8187L chip, which is wireless G and backwards compatable. This card works with the following…

Pretty cheesy looking, but that is just my opinion. How do you make an antennae attractive?