Verdict: Cheaper than the Striker and a better overclocker
There's a school of thought that decrees items must be priced at a level that fits prospective buyers' expectations; sell your product too cheaply, and people will think it isn't worthwhile. With Nvidia's nForce 680i boards, such as the BFG and ECS, costing around £180, and the Striker Extreme going for more than £250, Asus' new, £94 P5B-E appears to be a budget board, and as appetising as a pack of Kwik Save own-brand, low-fat Jaffa biscuits (not real Cakes).
The P5B-E doesn't look any more appetising in the flesh; the PCB is a sickly yellow, and the silver heatsinks on the Northbridge and Southbridge look average compared with the Striker's amazing heatpipes. Beneath the less than amazing visuals, though, lurks the heart - or at least the electrical traces - of a champion. The P5B-E's heatsinks hide Intel's P965 Northbridge and the ICH8R Southbridge, the same chipset that powers the Elite-listed P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP.
There are, of course, quite a few differences between this board and the P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP. The latter has two full-sized PCI-E slots, each of which provides enough PCI-E lanes for you to install two ATi graphics cards in CrossFire. With just one 16x PCI-E slot, the P5B-E limits you to a single graphics card. The P5B-E has no heatpipe or VRM cooling, no 8-phase power circuitry and no WiFi, but it has a single Gigabit LAN port and 8-channel Intel HD Audio, with both optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs. The back panel also has analogue audio outputs, along with FireWire and four USB ports, plus another six on a blanking plate.
The chipset offers a decent array of features, including six S-ATA II ports and support for a wide range of CPUs, right up to the quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX6700. There are three PCI slots but, with a dual-slot graphics card installed, one of these is obstructed, and another sits right next to the cooler. Irritatingly, the CMOS clear jumper is directly underneath where the heatsink of a dual-slot graphics card is located.
Head into the BIOS, however, and matters improve; there are two BIOS save profiles, plus the ability to adjust the FSB up to 650MHz (2,600MHz effective), a maximum RAM speed of 1,066MHz, and decent maximum voltages, including 2.45V for the RAM, 1.7V for the CPU and 1.7V for the Northbridge. You can also overvolt the Southbridge and its 1.2V supply, as well as the FSB. The BIOS of our test board had a couple of quirks though; accessing the Hardware Monitor page, complete with fan control, had a nasty habit of crashing the BIOS and, at high overclocks, it sometimes had trouble with resets. However, it behaved perfectly when the PC was turned on and off. The board was also capable of high overclocks, and put the more expensive nForce 680i boards to shame. With the multiplier of our test CPU lowered, the P5B-E was stable with a 505MHz FSB (2,020MHz effective). This is the highest FSB we've seen from a Core 2 board. Yes, higher than the Striker, although the Northbridge becomes very hot, and will need a lot of airflow to run for extended periods.
If you're still doubtful about the P5B-E's budget origins, check out its performance: at both stock speeds and when we overclocked our test CPU to 3.6GHz, which is the maximum it can manage with the multiplier at default, the P5B-E's scores were as good as, or better than, boards costing more than double its price.
CONCLUSION
As a reviewer, it's very easy to bash products for poor value for money - after all, you can just look at the price of two items and perform a simple sum. Equally, it's just as easy to completely ignore price - after all, reviewers don't pay for products, so they can quite easily ignore or minimise the importance of cost, forgetting what it's like when it's their credit card number they're handing over at the store.
The P5B-E is definitely good value for money. It has only a few good features, but its good points are crucial skills for a motherboard to have. Compared with nForce 680i boards, and pricier P5B models, the P5B-E lacks features, but, as long as you're aware of this, then it's a real star - don't write it off just because it's so much cheaper than the attention-grabbing Striker.
