p5k e versus GA-P35

[DocHolliday2]

I'd love to overclock in the near future, and the ASUS seems like the way to go. But I've been told to go the gigabyte way to save a few dollars.

I rather pay an extra $50 to get $50 or more performance out of my other parts.

p5ke bridges seem good and I love the fact it as built in wifi! Yes it does have 2 PCI-e expansions, but I don't have any plans to upgrade that, Anymore lol.

The GA-P35 seems so cheap imo, and is worth the $50 upgrade anyways, and it doesn't have wifi :laugh: nor does it have another pci-e expansion for future upgrades. (never know what the future brings in games)

For overclocking and upgradability I think I will have to go with the p5ke.

what do you all think?

 

[bluxa]

Hi DocHoliday2, I cant speak about the gigabyte but I have the p5k-E. i bought it because of the wi-fi and also because feature wise it is very similar to the p5k deluxe but cheaper.

On the plus side it overclocks very easily. This is my first build and I overclocked a q6600 to 3Ghz very easily, if it wasnt for the high ambients here I think I could easily clock it much further. When i was adjusting the voltages and didnt give it enough juice the mobo always restored itself and let me re-enter the Bios without probs after a restart. The wi-fi works well too and for me it is useful for if I put the computer in a different room.

On the downside these boards run pretty hot. I've read that its to do with the location of the sensor. I have ambient temps in the mid-high 30's here at the moment and the Mobo has past 50c before (sometimes its higher than the cpu at idle!). According to the Asus website anything 65c or below is fine, and to be honest it doesnt seem to have affected performance in any way. Another issue I had was related to my sata hard drive. The computer would stall for a few seconds every so often and it began to get worse (I actually opened a thread in Computer Help about this). After trying lots of different things I eventually plugged the drive into a different sata slot and fingers crossed it seems to have sorted the problem. I'm not sure if it means that there is a problem with the sata ports or not - but it seems to suggest that. As far as i am aware there have been other sata issues associated with p5k series so you may want to google this.

Generally, though apart from the sata problem I'm happy enough with it. I'm pretty new at all this so the more experienced members will be able to give you good advice about which to choose. I thought it might be useful to you just to hear about some of the experiences I have had. i hope its helpful.