ASUS P5B Deluxe LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Very fast and stable operation.

Cons: It takes some work to get CD and/or DVD IDE drives to work using UDMA with the JMicron IDE Controller (this is the only PATA controller on the board).

Overall Review: The JMicron controller fix: 1) install JMicron by running the AsusSetup.exe (JMB363 dir of P5B CD) 2) right click My Computer and select Properties 3) in Systems Properties select Hardware tab, then click on Device Manager 4) in Device Manager expand SCSI and RAID controllers entry 5) right click on Jmicron controller entry and select Update Driver 6) in "Can Windows connect to Windows Update" select "Yes, this time only" and click Next 7) in "What would you want the wizard to do?" select "Install the software automatically" and click Next 8) the wizard lists all the Jmicron drivers and "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" driver, select the "Standard" driver for installation 9) When done, the system will be using standard PCI IDE controller where you can select DMA mode 10) with this I got my Sony 810A and NEC ND3550A DVD burners to operate using DMA mode

Pros: It's a great board top to bottom - if you don't pay attention to the very faulty Sound chip that comes with it. Everything else about the board is wonderful. I've loved it since day one, it works beautifully.

Cons: So this soundchip that comes with this board seems to be a faulty one. According to ASUS forums and ASUS themselves they know about the problem and currently don't have a solution for it. There are a large number of problems with the Sound chip and it seems to vary with each and every board. For my board 5.1 Doesn't work. Side front speakers get routed to the center and rear speakers get routed to the Sub. Absolutely no way to fix it, I've tried everything - talked to everyone- and even looked to ASUS for help but only recieved a shrug. Other problems vary from no Sound at all, loud crackling if music is turned up to high, high pitched whines, left speaker in 5.1 only working, bass popping, and many more. Beyond all that, which is all easily fixed with a Sound Card - the board is wonderful!

Overall Review: ...Eh, it's ASUS so it can't be all that bad. I still like the board.

Pros: My E6600 is (easily) running at 125% with Intel's stock cooler. There are many, many BIOS options to choose from. There are lots of cables (including extra 90 degree SATA cables!), connections are well marked and everything is in the right place (for a change!) Some Motherboard chip cooling is via a well-laid-out passive heat pipe, which is pretty neat, but the layout presumes the board will be vertical, so it should probably not be run laying flat indefinitely.

Cons: There is little or no information to work with if you get the no boot/no beep "Black Screen of Nothingness" when you turn it on. For instance my new DDR2-800 OCZ Platinum memory did not allow a boot because this particular stick is not (yet) recognized by BIOS (711) and it requires 2.1 v. This board supplies memory with 1.8v by default, so you have to boot with 1.8v memory (apparently the DRAM standard) and then reset this manually in BIOS before installing the new memory. Look in the manual (online) for GUARANTEED compatible memory sticks before buying high end memory to use in this board! There are a lot of postings online about RMAs of this board due to failure to boot, but I would encourage everyone to work through to a real diagnosis. I assure you that this board really rocks! There are lots of SATA ports available on this board, but only 2 connects for PATA. (You can now find SATA DVD-Readers, but not yet DVD-Writers.)

Overall Review: I have built many "enthusiast" computers over the years with newegg parts, but never using Intel chips before this one. Installation was moderately smooth (except as outlined in Cons, above), and once I got to the BIOS, I was VERY Pleasantly surprised with the stability and features. Core2Duo stability outlined in Wusy's guide suggests a 1:1 CPU:memory counter ratio (for stability), which is only about DDR2-533 for the E6600 base of 266 MHz. If you only want to push an E6600 from its 2.4GHz base freq up to 3GHz, you probably do not need really expensive (DDR2-800+) memory nor an aftermarket cooler. Also had trouble with a new internal Flash Drive reader from newegg. This was really strange, but I got another no boot/no beep if this flash reader was just plugged into a motherboard USB Port! Changed readers and everything worked fine. ASUS Tech support (online) responded next-day to an inquiry. They were not particularly on-target, but they did offer several solutions.

Pros: This is really a great motherboard for the price. For the most part, I've had no problems. This board is way over-clockable and seems designed for doing this. The Asus tools are pretty neat (though after I got the confidence I did a manual OC). I have my core 2 duo 2.4Ghz running at 3.4Ghz without any problems at all. And if you mess up the OC settings (e.g. go too far, etc.) they system will tell you right after posting with a “OVERCLOCKING FAILED! – select an option” message. You can then either F1 (load defaults) or F2 (enter setup). Very nice! Also, it has pretty much every port you could want, including a ton of SATA ports and USB ports plus 2 1GB network cards. The manual was quite good and came in very handy. I could not be happier with my board!

Cons: I had purchased the OEM edition of XP Pro SP2b. Well, there are no drivers for the RAID controller on that install (not sure about others) so you have to make a floppy and press F6 when the XP install tells you to "press F6 to install additional RAID controller drivers" (at the very beginning of setup). Once I went out and bought a floppy drive (ugh) and then booted up off the Asus CD that comes with the mobo to make the floppy, I was able to get my XP installed to my RAID0 array. I searched far and wide for this solution to no avail (and I am a really good searcher) and happened to stumble upon it only by accidentally leaving the CD in the drive on a reboot (it boots to a utility that makes the floppy).

Overall Review: For this price, you can NOT go wrong. I love it! NewEgg Rules and you should buy this mobo from them. You can’t go wrong IMHO.

Pros: I run at 2.85Ghz on the e4300. Idle temps at 30c and load no higher than 58c with a passive Thermalright Ultra-120 cooler. No fans on my cpu cooler, only on the case (Antec P180b) EXCELLENT case. Complying with the FSB:memory ratio, I run at 1:1 8x356 with vcore @ auto, vmem @ 2.25v (.5 higher due to asus not having a 2.2 that matched my ram rating). Memory runs at 4-4-4-4-11. Final thoughts: GREAT BOARD

Cons: Took a lot of understanding to figure out why the board was overclocking sometimes. Disabling the Asus overclocking software and using motherboard settings worked better. Board configured my patriot memory incorrectly for 5-5-5-5-16 out of the box. 5:4 ratio I believe.

Overall Review: Out of the box, the p5b overclocked my e4300 to 2.4Ghz (from 1.8Ghz oem). That was thanks to the 9x266Mhz fsb. Ran stable and cool, but still a suprise to me.

Pros: good board, good chipset and supports a variety of raid setups. alot of extras and I mounted it into a couple of cases but eventaul stayed with the Antec Nine hundred. Instructions werent the best but if your buying this to build you probably dont need them anyway with the exception of my other thoughts. There is a voltage issue with the bios that the board is shipped with.

Cons: Instructions make no mention of a Bios/Voltage issue you may encounter when installing DDR2 pc6400 Ram. I believe if you try to install ram with a voltage of 1.9 to 2.1 or higher the bios from the factory will not recognize it and you will get a black screen. How ever this is some what easily fixed be downloading the flash utillity and current bios from ASUS and aquiring some older low voltage ram. With the older ram you can boot into the setup and complete the process of updating the Bios at which point the board will no longer function with the older ram. You then install the newer higher voltage ram and you are good to go.

Overall Review: I like ASUS boards and will continue to use them. I did get shipped a bad board before and ASUS squared me away with a good one..... I stay loyal. I noticed someone writting that it didnt support the intel duo 2.. but this might have actually been the real problem

Pros: Lots of features, nice heatpipe cooling setup. Makes overclocking easy. Looks sharp. Pretty stand-by and power backlit LED setup on the board.

Cons: Many people are experiencing dead boards anywhere from 4 days to a couple of weeks after installation. Mine died about a week into use. I see more than normal "my board just died, CMOS reset not working, removed all components, still dead, HELP!" posts in Asus's message boards. Unless you really like this board, check out the non-deluxe version. I switched to it and have no complaints, so far. The built-in SoundMAX sound is very lacking. Complaints abound about crackling sound quality -- made better by decreasing the WAV volume setting. Apparently the BASS/TREBLE settings were also removed a version or so ago to try and address the issue, but this significantly decreases quality and functionality even further. If you still want the board, consider adding on a better sound card. They're not that expensive, and you get better features, too.

Overall Review: Asus's utility installation program is pretty pathetic. Install drivers one by one, not using their automatic installation setting. Manual is good until you get to the BIOS settings part.

Pros: Very stable board, with absolutely no issues. Worked right out of the box with Core 2 Duo E6600, eVGA GeForce 7600 GTS, CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive, PLEXTOR PX-760A, NEC ND-4570A, Antec LifeStyle SONATA II. Overclocks E6600 like mad (from 2.4 to 3.6Ghz on stock cooling). Plenty of cables. Great value in my opinion.

Cons: Can't think of any.

Overall Review: I can see how someone could possibly have a problem with the IDE port. It's on the edge and mounted at 90° angle. This thing has absolutely everything my client needs. I'm very pleased with this board. I will be buying one for myself in the near future.