ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Supports the Intel Core 2 Duo. Has lots of ports integrated into the motherboard, and the legacy serial port can be disabled in the BIOS. Comes with external WiFi antenna plus the bottom of the antenna is magnetic, so it easily snaps to your computer case. Comes with a 2xUSB 2.0 dongle and a FireWire dongle. Also comes with everything you need to set up a SATA RAID (except the hard disks), Q-connectors for easier installation, and a good microphone. I didn't need the 2 extra mounts that were provided. The heat pipe is a nice feature for cooling.

Cons: Picky about the RAM. It would be wise to look up the compatible RAM types before buying RAM for this motherboard. The motherboard manual, which contains the compatible RAM list, is available from the ASUS web site. You may need to find a low-end but compatible stick of RAM to use to update the BIOS to support high-end RAM. Without updating, you may not even get to the POST. Note: another reviewer (MaK) said that ASUS will send you a free updated BIOS chip if you call ASUS. So, if you can't get to the POST and don't have a compatible spare DDR2 stick, try calling ASUS. Anyway, I received an error during POST and had to flash the BIOS in order to support the Core 2 Duo E6300. In any case, updating the BIOS is the first thing you should do after installation - updating the BIOS from a USB pen drive is quick and easy, instructions are in the motherboard manual.

Overall Review: If you have AC'97 front panel audio, you must go into the BIOS setup and explain that you are using AC'97 and not HD for your front panel audio. Do not connect the fan that snaps onto the end of the heat pipe unless you are setting up a passive-cooler or water-cooler cooling system - it will interfere with an ordinary cooling system. The PATA connector is turned on its side, making connection of a PATA device like a DVD drive a little more interesting. All in all, this is an excellent motherboard.

Pros: Full featured board 7 Internal SATA 3.0 Gb/s plus 1 external CORSAIR XMS2(PC2 6400) worked fine Run @1066 w/timing set to auto 1-16X PCI-E slot (1-4XPCI-E) which is enough for my use while still giving you 3 PCI slots Many 2-16X PCI-E boards have only one usable PCI Slotwhen using a large Video card, Shop carfully

Cons: 1 PATA IDE (2 device) Soundmax driver lock up BSOD. Had to disable it and out my Sound blaster Audigy card in. Add on USB ports are dead, Started to RMA but the internal 4 should be enough. Expensive

Overall Review: ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP Intel C2D E6400 (2.13) CORSAIR XMS2 2 x 1GB) DDR2 (PC2 6400) ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1900 SeaSonic S12-600 ATX12V 600W (exellent but pricey) 3DMARK 06 4504 All default settings Plan to OC a bit later Nice upgrade package for around 1G

Pros: Easy to install. Relatively good documentation -- better than the Intel boards I have used. I like the Asus Windows Utility. It is easy to use and has some handy features. I flashed the BIOS from the Windows Utility and everything went well. Haven't tried over-clocking yet. I will let the CPU run cool until I need the extra power.

Cons: There is one annoying problem that keeps me from giving this board 5 eggs. Like zevo reported in his 9/11/2006 review, the primary IDE has problems. It won't let my DVD burner burn DVDs. It will burn CDs but not DVDs. When I try to burn a DVD, some burning software sends the data but the burner never does anything. Other burning software reports an error. I have spent 5 days trying to fix this annoying problem. For a long time I thought it was software or Windows related. I finally re-installed Windows, changed to a Plextor DVD burner, changed the cable, etc. Still doesn't work. I am now convinced that this is a motherboard problem. zevo thinks this is a JMicron IDE controller problem and that makes sense to me. I hope there is a driver or BIOS fix soon.

Overall Review: It is so annoying that there is nothing about this on the Asus website -- at least I couldn't find anything. Interesting that I found a mention of it here in Newegg.com reviews. I did a quick look for SATA DVD burners, but none seem to have good reviews.

Pros: This board has everything I would ask for. Its been running my conroe 6700 at 3 Ghz very stable. I don't do much that requires overclocking and to keep the heat down I don't push it, but I'm sure it would be stable far beyond 3Ghz. I did update the bios, but it ran the Conroe right outta the box. I love the AI Suite and the other software that came with this motherboard. My CPU temp is at 43c no load and never gets much over 50c running BF2.

Cons: none so far

Overall Review: Intel E6700 Conroe GIGABYTE Geforce 7950GX2 Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 DDR2 800 2 SAMSUNG SpinPoint 40GB 7200 SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives in Raid 0 400w power supply Very Stable using AI Suite to handle overclocking.

Pros: Over clocks like a dream. takes a p4 630 (3GHz) to 4.29Ghz stable. officialy the chipset only supports ddr2-800 but after u overclock some it gives you the option to run ddr2-900 and ddr2-1066. runs sli with unofficial modded nvidia drivers (google them)even though second pciex16 slot only runs at x4 mode max

Cons: intel chipset does not officialy support nvidia sli even though it is only a driver limitation, not a con if you dont mind running modded drivers or only use one video card or 2 cards to get multi monitor support.

Overall Review: download the intel raid drivers off asus's website if u want to install xp directly onto raid. runs vista x86 and x64 beta's and supports conroe so its more than future-proof expensive but not any more so than other enthusiast boards of this class. plenty of goodies for most peoplee

Pros: I chose this for the board to build my E6300 based pc around. I read all of the raves about overclocking and how easy it was, so i had to go get it. And let me tell you its easy, on the 6300 the cpu frequency is 266, i upped it to 350 and boom im operating at 2.45 ghz and the best part is it automatically overclocks your ram and video card, luckily for me i didnt have to flash the bios or anything outrageous, i just took the time to visit the QVL list for ram, well worth it

Cons: None really, I had purchased one in a rush just to get to building but cancelled my order and did the research on this and found it great to build an overclocked sli system around, i havent used the mic or the wifi yet, and really havent learned how to fine tune the overclocking, but im sure if i took the time i'd squeeze every drop of power from this badboy. None of those are cons for the board i just didnt want to say none.

Overall Review: Well worth the money, luckily everything i bought worked when i plugged them all together, no flashing needed, i had been building this pc week by week for months and thankfully it all worked.

Pros: Ran perfectly for 5 months with Pentium D 940 3.2GHz at 113 degrees F. Just flashed bios 0910 and installed Core 2 Extreme x6800 2.94GHz and booted right up. Now runs at 91 degrees F with much improved performance.

Cons: Takes a little effort to get JMicron DVD optimized.

Overall Review: This was an early motherboard from last summer with bios 302. BIOS flash was all that was needed to get compatible with Core 2 Extreme. Despite the cautions about memory compatiblity, this has been a very reliable and stable board. (2G Corsair DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 and 2 Raptor 150s.)

Pros: board OC's very well. was able to take an C2D e6300 to 3.53Ghz (1900FSB 475Mhz clock 950Mhz Ram) any faster and the board would give out and BSOD or lock up. (im using water cooled cpu and northbridge with 1cm x 1cm mini ram sinks on the Vregs. but almost 2Ghz fsb is incredible for any board.) very good intel ICH8 southbridge is awesome at raid and all other I/O functions. 3 diff 80Gb sata-II drives = 1 very fast raid0 array

Cons: BEWARE "1004" bios revision!! it was the end of this very reliable board, didnt complete the update and never came on again after the next restart. xp pro only shows 2gb of ram with 4x 1gb ocz gold ddr2-1000 installed. bios can see 4gb as well as XPx64 and vista (both) maybe a prob with my copy? would not work well with an Extreme Edition on any bios revision other than stock. if your having problems, try a different version, dont be afraid to use one other than the most current with this baord.

Overall Review: (was) running SLI with modded drivers with 2 xfx 7800gt's. CPU-z reports 2 sticks of ram running at pc2-8000 speed (1000MHz) and 2 sticks running at pc2-6400 (800Mhz) when manually set to anything more than 800Mhz....wierd huh? find a bios revision that works for you and stick with it. some odd glitches here and there, but overall a superb board that i would recomend to anyone.