Which Asus P5K?

[mis33]

I am building a new P35 PC in the next few weeks, waiting for the Intel CPU price cut. I am leaning towards a Asus MoBo because of its reliability.

I visited my local PC retail stores and found 3 P35 Asus MoBo available: P5K, P5K Deluxe Wi-Fi and P5K3 Deluxe Wi-Fi.

The P5K3 is out of the running because it does not support DDR2. According to my readings, DDR3 is now too expensive and it does not offer great boost in performance to justify its cost.

So, I am now deciding between the P5K and P5K Deluxe Wi-Fi. When comparing features of the 2 MoBo, I see the lack of Wi-Fi and Raid functionalities in the P5K. I do not plan on using these 2 features. Anything else will I be missing if I buy the P5K ?

I also saw the P5K-WS in Asus site. The only difference in features I can see between P5K and P5K-WS is PCI-X. Is PCI-X important?

 

[aevm]

I am building a new P35 PC in the next few weeks, waiting for the Intel CPU price cut. I am leaning towards a Asus MoBo because of its reliability.

Funny, I was often told to stay away from Asus mobos because of their reliability. OK, I was looking at 680i mobos, not P35, but still...

 

[topspeed]

I've just ordered the P5KC. Seems to have all that I need. So far I've only blown one mobo: an ECS K755A and only after years of faithful service. Never had any problems whatsoever with ASUS.

 

[systemlord]

I have two Asus P5B WiFi boards and not one has ever given me any problem. I'm stuck on Asus boards. The Deluxe gives you more options, the P5B Deluxe WiFi has five case fan plug-ins where the non WiFi only has three. So your going to lose a few options. As for DDR3 I agree with you that its too pricey right now and the performence is about the same as DDR2.

 

[andrewcc]

I've had a P5K Deluxe/Wifi since the end of May and I have had zero problems with it. Stable, easy to use OC options, wonderfullness, etc. However, if you're not going to be needing the Wifi or the extra RAID functionality, I see no reason to drop the extra dollars on the deluxe model. I see people on a variety of message boards that have said the vanilla board works great too....don't get scared by the lack of shiny stuff 🙂.

Oh, and you asked about the PCI-X........I don't know for sure, but I'm fairly certain that's something to do with workstation graphics or something along those lines.....I'd just ignore most of the extra versions of the family and stick with either the straight up P5k or the Deluxe.

Good luck!

 

[Rage_3k_Moiz]

PCI-X is a new interface 2x faster than PCI and designed to replace the latter. It's fully compatible with PCI cards. Not really a necessary feature. My P5K Deluxe just arrived about 3 weeks ago and so far I have no complaints.

 

[Maziar]

Well , P5KC is a very good board, it supports both DDR2 and DDR3 , and also 1333MHZ CPU's

http://event.asus.com/mb/45nm/

 

[MadHacker]

I bought ordered the P5K Deluxe, in the hopes that it will overclock a bit better and run a little bit cooler... with all the extra heatpipes.
worst case senario... I wasted an extra $80.