Reviewed by Barry Little - April 22, 2008

Manufacturer: ASUS

Model: 90-MBB810-G0UAY00Z

Price: Get the latest from Shopping.com

The growing cost of PC gaming is increasingly coming under criticism. Everyone is frustrated with upgrades that make purchases obsolete in a matter of months, lack major improvements and often leave previous issues unresolved. Enthusiasts are fighting back, buying products that will allow them to enjoy their hobby without going broke—like one particular motherboard that has deluxe series features with a mainstream price—the ASUS P5K PRO.

About ASUS

ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology. As a leading provider of 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) total solutions, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium. In 2006, the company shipped 55 million motherboards, which means one in three desktop PCs sold last year was powered by an ASUS motherboard. Our 2006 revenues reached US$16.5 billion, and is expected to garner US$23 billion in 2007.

To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service. That's why all 100,000 over employees of ASUS strive for the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services.

With unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, ASUS won 2,168 awards in 2006, meaning on average, the company received over 5 awards everyday last year. BusinessWeek ranked ASUS amongst its “InfoTech 100” for the 9th straight year. The readers of Tom's Hardware Guide, the world's largest IT website, selected ASUS as the best maker of motherboards and graphics cards. Furthermore, the company is ranked as No.1 in quality products and services by the Wall Street Journal.

Packaging and Accessories

The ASUS P5K PRO’s box has a striking, metallic blue finish (almost like tinted aluminum foil) with the AI Lifestyle logo airbrushed and watermarked in the background. With PC components being more of a disposable commodity these days as technology and “planned obsolescence” march on at the usual break-neck pace, more manufacturers are embracing “Green” (environmental) products. A good thing when you consider that landfills are increasingly becoming exclusive graveyards for outdated computer hardware. The P5K PRO does its part for a better environment by being RoHS Compliant, as shown in the lower left-hand corner of the box. For those concerned more about performance than hugging trees, the P5K PRO’s Intel P35 Express “Bear Lake” chipset supports Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors—including the latest 45nm models.

Few things in this world are getting cheaper—including the electricity required to power your PC. Which would explain why ASUS prominently displays their exclusive Energy Processing Unit (EPU for short) in the lower right-hand corner of the box, which reportedly can save over 50% of the CPU’s power when you aren’t performing processor-intensive tasks. Registering your P5K PRO at http://vip.asus.com and becoming a VIP member entitles you to a Unique Personal Product Page where you can access technical info on your registered products along with, FAQs, BIOS and driver updates a lot quicker and easier than navigating through the ASUS site in the usual manner. You also get your own technical mailbox to initiate and track queries and RMAs to ASUS technical support.

Flip the box over, and you’ll gain greater insight on how ASUS EPU Technology works. Just because the P5K PRO is a mainstream motherboard doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “cheap” or lacks quality components. You’ll find the same 8-phase Power Design and Solid State Capacitors on higher-end ASUS boards on the P5K PRO. Ironically, some top-of-the-line enthusiast motherboards that cost twice as much as the ASUS P5K PRO are still using old-fashioned electrolytic capacitors. You can also peruse detailed specs on the P5K PRO which are, for a board in this class and price-range, quite impressive. The three year warranty is reassuring as well.

Open the box and you’ll find all the accessories neatly stored on top of a cardboard insert, with the motherboard tucked away underneath. ASUS has always provided first-class packing and protection for their motherboards, and the P5K PRO is no exception. Short of running the box over with a truck, the current arrangement used by ASUS should insure that your P5K PRO will be free of damage when you unpack it.

Inside, you’ll find a printed multilingual Quick Start Guide for the P5K PRO, and the more detailed User’s Guide in English (the English version of the Quick Start Guide is on the Support DVD in Adobe Acrobat Reader format). Regardless of your native tongue, you’ll appreciate the clear, concise and well-illustrated documentation of the P5K PRO. You’ll also find six SATA Hard Drive Cables with straight connectors on one end and 90° connectors on the other, plus a dual SATA to Molex power adaptor, and the usual ASUS-branded flat ribbon Floppy and IDE cables.

ASUS is famous for simple yet innovative motherboard accessories that solve long-standing “industry-standard annoyances” that have continuously plagued the Enthusiast/DIY community who build their own systems. Case in point (no pun intended): Q-Shield and Q-Connector. One of the most irritating things about conventional I/O shields for motherboards, are those metal fingers at the top of each port opening, which always makes positioning the board inside the case more difficult than it needs to be—forcing you to bend them out of the way (or break them trying to do so), just to get the board installed. ASUS not only removed the fingers from the Q-Shield, but have lined the back of it with a foam strip encased in a foil-like material which not only reduces the potential of static damage when installing the board, but shields the P5K PRO from EMI (Electronic Magnetic Interference).

Another royal pain when building your own rig are the case’s front panel wires that have to be connected to the appropriate headers on the motherboard. The only thing worse than having to individually connect and re-connect each one if you have to remove your motherboard from the case for any reason, is trying to read the tiny lettering silk-screened on the motherboard headers to reconnect them—usually while squinting inside a dimly lit case and following the wiring diagram in the manual. Q-Connector is a simple female to male extension of the motherboard headers that allow you to connect the case’s front panel cables to it, and then connect it to the motherboard. It’s keyed, so it will only fit one way. So the next time you need to remove your mobo, simply disconnect the Q-Connector with the front panel wires attached, and reconnect it when you reinstall the board again. ASUS also includes a similar connector for the IEEE-1394 Firewire connection on the P5K PRO. Simple things, but they can make your life that much easier when building or servicing your system.

The ASUS P5K PRO Support DVD includes all the necessary drivers for installing the board under 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista. Also included are utilities for DOS and Windows-based BIOS flashing, and customizing the splash screen on boot-up; creating an Intel ICH9 RAID/AHCI “F6” driver installation disk, updating the BIOS under Windows; and the ASUS Smart Probe II and AI Suite utilities for hardware monitoring, fan and power management and overclocking.

Additional software includes a number of popular try-before-you-buy programs. Symantec’s Norton Internet Security 2007 leads the pack, which will protect your system for 90 days before requiring you to purchase a year’s subscription for the latest anti-virus signatures and program updates—or upgrade to Norton 360 2.0 for about ten bucks more. InterVideo’s WinDVD 8 has a 14-day period before you have to pony up for the full version. Not much of a bargain now that new and improved WinDVD 9 is currently available, which you can also download and take for a spin for a full 30 days—minus HD DVD and Blu-Ray support, of course. Corel Snapfire Plus SE allows you to tweak and add special effect to digital photos as well as organizing them into slide-shows presentations that can be burned to a DVD. The good news: there’s no trial or feature time-limit. The bad: Snapfire’s “premium” features—the ones you’re most likely to use the most—are accessible only available if you purchase the full-version activation key.

The only “full-featured” programs on the disc are Ulead’s PhotoImpact 12 SE—a “lite” version of PhotoImpact 12—but still a darn good program for editing digital photos. And CyberLink’s PowerBackup—an easy to use and surprisingly full-featured program that is, unfortunately, limited to backing up to CDs, DVDs, and folders on local hard drives. Did I mention all the annoying ads for other CyberLink products you’ll be bombarded with when running PowerBackup? As for full-featured, non-crippleware freebies? Well there’s Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 and Microsoft DirectX 9…

Finally, there’s the ASUS P5K PRO motherboard, sealed in an ASUS-branded “honeycomb pattern” anti-static bag. A subtle but nice “premium” touch over a “Plain Jane” bag that makes the buyer feel that they’re getting a bit more for their money than just another than just a budget motherboard.

The P5K PRO—Features

The P5K PRO is a member of ASUS’ P5K series of P35 motherboards—sixteen in all, from the budget P5K to the high-end P5K64 WS workstation board (you can check out the complete line-up here). In terms of features the P5K PRO falls roughly in the middle of the P35-based P5K family. ASUS advertises the P5K PRO as the model with “Deluxe series features, mainstream price!” Let’s take a look at the board’s features:

The P5K PRO does have quite a few features that you’d expect to find on a higher-end gamer/enthusiast motherboard. At the lower price-point that the P5K PRO is being offered, you’re probably thinking there’s got to be compromises somewhere, compared to its more costly counterparts like the P5K Premium/Wi-Fi-AP or P5K3 Deluxe/Wi-Fi-AP.

Let’s go over the layout of the board.

The P5K PRO—Layout

The ASUS P5K PRO measures 24.5cm (9.6”) long and 30.5cm (12.0”) wide. The PCB is not pure black, but a very dark brown that still looks nice good through a case window, particularly with the more conservative color choices of the expansion slots, DIMM sockets and I/O ports. Copper heatsinks passively cool the P35 “Bear Lake” Northbridge, the ICH9R Southbridge and VRMs behind and next to the LGA775 CPU socket. The Northbridge, Southbridge and rear VRM heatsinks are without the additional benefit of heat pipes found on other P5K boards. While 8-pin ATX 12V auxiliary power connectors are par-for-the-course for most motherboards these days, the P5K PRO is fed by a “legacy” 4-pin ATX 12V connector.

Four color-coded DDR2 64-bit 240-pin DIMM sockets sit in a slightly staggered arrangement on the board, supporting up to 8GB RAM at speeds up to 1066MHz—well over the 800MHz ceiling officially imposed by Intel’s P35 chipset. This is accomplished by ASUS’ Super Memspeed Technology, and is nothing new for ASUS—a company well known for their technical wizardry in breaking official performance boundaries and adding value to their products which has helped catapult them into their world-wide leadership position. Naturally to take full advantage of 4GB of RAM or more, you’ll need Windows XP Professional x64, Windows Vista Ultimate x64 or Vista Home Premium x64. For dual-channel operation, it is preferable to populate the yellow slots first on the P5K PRO, then the black ones. Just above the first DIMM socket to the right, you’ll find the ASUS EPU chip responsible for the P5K PRO’s energy-saving prowess. One bonus of the staggered DIMM socket arrangement is that it does give you a bit more wiggle room for the slot’s retaining clips when a full-length card is installed.

The Marvell 88SE6102 PATA controller supports two legacy devices at 133/100/66MHz Ultra DMA bus-mastering speeds via the red 40-pin IDE port on the front edge of the board. If your case’s intake fan uses a 3-pin power cable, you can connect it to the fan header labeled CHA_FAN2 near the IDE port. The P5K PRO can support up to 6 SATA drives in Standard IDE Mode, NCQ and hot-swappable AHIC Mode, or RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. Note that boot drives should be connected to the red SATA ports—1, 2 5 and 6. SATA hard drives with non-bootable partitions and SATA optical drives should be connected to black SATA ports 3 and 4. Just below Port 4 is the Standby Power LED which lights green when power is being applied to the board.

Japanese conductive polymer capacitors are everywhere on the P5K PRO. As part of ASUS’ 3^rd generation 8 Phase Power Design, they insure more reliable and efficient operation. And their lower profile compared to conventional electrolyte capacitors tips the odds in your favor that there will be fewer headaches using full-length video cards rocking double-wide coolers and aftermarket CPU coolers with big heatsinks. Still, it doesn’t hurt to play it safe and do some measuring if you’re planning on using an oversized CPU cooler on the PK5 PRO, in spite of what appears to be more than an average amount of room around the CPU socket.

The P5K PRO is equipped with two PCIE x16 slots with a pair of PCIE x1 slots sandwiched between them, and two PCI slots near the bottom edge of the board (they aren’t PCI Express 2.0 compliant, however). Unlike some reference design motherboards, ASUS provides plenty of breathing space for multiple video card applications, and the P5K PRO is no exception. While the P5K PRO supports AMD’s Cross Fire video card technology, as per the Intel P35 spec, only the blue primary PCIE slot operates at its maximum 16x bandwidth. The black “universal” PCIE slot has its bandwidth cut down to 4x operation.