Asus P5B Deluxe vs Asus P5B-E Plus

[shroud72]

I'm looking to build my first C2D system and so far I have purchased the following components.

E6600 CPU
Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 PC2 8000 2GB(2x1GB)
XFX 8800GTX
Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Music soundcard
Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 for the CPU

Bringing over from my current system
Coolmaster Case
1 Maxtor SATA 2 250 gig HD
1 Maxtor ATA-133 250 gig HD
Pioneer DVDR 109

Looking to add the following components (decided but haven't purchased yet)

Antec TruePower Trio 650 watt
1 or 2 Samsung HD501LJ 500 GIG SATA 2 HD (haven't decided if I want to go Raid0 yet)
Asus P5B-E Plus or Asus P5B Deluxe

I need the following for my system:

PCI-Express slot
PCI slot
Firewire
Good overclocking
Good overall features

Both motherboards seem to have similar features but the Deluxe adds the following

- ASUS 8-Phase Power Design
- ASUS Fanless Design: Heat-pipe solution
- ASUS Fanless Design: Stack Cool 2
- ASUS Q-Fan 2
- ASUS Optional Fan for Water-cooling

As far as cooling, are the mobo built in cooling extras etc on the Deluxe that good?

I want to overclock the CPU, but not that far as I want it to stay stable here in the Spanish summer at 36 celcius room temperature.

Comments Suggestions are welcome, however since I live in Spain, not everything is easily available here.

 

[LintMan]

I just bought a P5B Deluxe. I had looked at the P5B-E, but I didn't want to play the "Rev1.02G" lottery. (IIRC, the older rev board was limited in how much mem voltage it supported, limiting its OC ability. An Anandtech article said a fix was available in 1.02G, but no purchasers were receiving those rev boards). It looks like at least Newegg might be shipping the new rev now, though, according to one guy here at least.

 

[shroud72]

I'm in Europe so the PB5-E's are called PB5-E Plus with the Rev 1.02G so not really an issue. How is the extra cooling on the PB5 Deluxe? Do you think the extra money is worth it for the Deluxe? Are you happy with your motherboard and its overclocking potential?

 

[LintMan]

That's cool about the Plus version being 1.02G.

I only received my P5B Deluxe yesterday (as part of a whole new system build) and it POSTs, but no OS installed yet, so no OC'ing for me yet until I've got everything settled.

But the board is supposed to be a pretty good overclocker. I was particularly gratified to see this anandtech article picking the P5B WiFi Deluxe as their top P965 board the day after I put my order in for one. I didn't get the WiFi version, but I believe they are the same otherwise.

FYI, my system is pretty similar to yours:
C2D E6700
Crucial Dominator DDR2-800 4x1GB
P5B Deluxe
XFX 8800GTX XXX (factory OC'd version)
Soundblasted X-Fi Fatality
Zalman 9700 heat sink
1xWD Raptor 150GB 10k RPM HD
1xSamsung 500GB HD
2xLite-On optical drives (combo & DVD+/-RW)
Seasonic S12 650W PS

 

[shroud72]

Thanks for sharing the info on your first impression so far and link to the Anandtech article. Please let me know once you get everything installed how well the board works for you. I'm pretty sure that I will get the P5B Deluxe board now because if I didn't I probably would regret it down the road. Since I'm spending this much on the system no sense in skimping on an extra 20 euros.
I probably won't have all of my parts until next week so please keep me posted on how well your system runs.

 

[Hulk]

One thing that pushed me over for the Deluxe is the fact that it uses the TI firewire chipset as opposed to VIA for the "E" board.

I'm loving my P5B Deluxe.

 

[sbinh]

Go for P5B Dlx .. It's an awesome board to oc... You're gonna have ton of fun with this board.

 

[shroud72]

Thanks for the comments, I ordered this board yesterday and should be here by Wednesday.