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Asus P5KC
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Rating: 70%
Review Title: Again another ram problem
Verdict: A good board overall, apart from it's ram compatability.
Bought 2x 1gb of corsair xms2 DDR2 4-4-4-12 800MHz memory, set the timings faster and fine it worked.. memtest gave several hundred errors. I RMA'D, installed again - at the faster 4-4-4-12 speeds, found i couldn't install xp and got post bsods. Set to the default settings of 5-5-5-18 it worked fine at 800MHz. Only £5 extra for those Cas 4 timings ram, so that wasn't too bad.
This motherboard has a habit of saying overclock failed the second you touch the ram. I also hate the way it powers down when saving bios settings. I found that the heatpipe makes a buzzing sort of noise when in idle+more when the cpu is under stress. However this may be a leeky capacitor near the top of the heatpipe. Very hard to tell. Hope to overclock my Q6600 in the future.
Rating: 70%
Review Title: Again another ram problem
Verdict: A good board overall, apart from it's ram compatability.
Bought 2x 1gb of corsair xms2 DDR2 4-4-4-12 800MHz memory, set the timings faster and fine it worked.. memtest gave several hundred errors. I RMA'D, installed again - at the faster 4-4-4-12 speeds, found i couldn't install xp and got post bsods. Set to the default settings of 5-5-5-18 it worked fine at 800MHz. Only £5 extra for those Cas 4 timings ram, so that wasn't too bad.
This motherboard has a habit of saying overclock failed the second you touch the ram. I also hate the way it powers down when saving bios settings. I found that the heatpipe makes a buzzing sort of noise when in idle+more when the cpu is under stress. However this may be a leeky capacitor near the top of the heatpipe. Very hard to tell. Hope to overclock my Q6600 in the future.
Rating: 90%
Review Title: P5KC Windows Vista 64 4Gb Ram
Verdict: No major issues, still tinkering under the hood to improve performance.
Installed in a mozart case so I knew I needed longer sata cables than standard. Using an E6300 I upgraded the bios to 1001 and installed an E8400. Then installed Windows Vista 64 Home premium oem. Installed OCZ 4 x 1GB ram DDR 800 dropped ram speed to 667 everything else to auto. When I get time I up the FSB
Rating: 50%
Review Title: Nice overclock, shame about bios update or Audio drivers!
Verdict: Board is ok, overclocks easily on stock cooling and takes 8Gb of ram no problem.
However, firstly I can't solve this problem without Dos 6.22 boot disks or something-Impossible to update the bios even with a Win 98 boot disk. What the hell is Asus thinking? I'm stuffed with a rather old bios that doesn't support the Penryn properly.
Audio will NOT properly install in windows Vista-Vista refuses the drivers due to signing issues. All in all, a damned decent overclock let down badly by 3 issues. Stupidly old fashioned bios update procedure that won't even support a Win 98 boot disk, audio that won't work in Vista and switching off the CDRom in Vista completely.
Right now, unless they change their bios procedure I would NOT buy this a second time around.
Rating: 85%
Review Title: Good all rounder for the money
Verdict: Very pleased.
Jack of all trades, master of none, some may say. It does seem to have memory niggles in a trade off for compatability with 2 types of RAM.
That aside, this board is a pleasure to work with. its happily running a Q6600 @ 3.4, 4x1gb DDR2 800, and ive achived a 3dmark score (with a GX2) of a shade under 18000.
Not bad for a distinctly average price tag.
Mine wont clock any further, which some may frown upon but lets not forget, this board is priced more mainstream than performance, and the added bonus of DDR3 makes it a stonking all rounder for the money.
Yes a more expensive board may allow higher O/C's, but you have to ask yourself, at what cost.....double the price for a few hundred mhz? worth it for some maybe but this board certainy aiming above its station.
Rating: 60%
Review Title: good if you stick with pc2-6400 @800MHz
Verdict: Mad issues with pc2-8500 RAM, this board seems to be very picky about its memory. Other than this it is a great board
Got this board last week. everything was fine until I tried to get my corsair dominator pc2-8500 running at 1066MHz (its rated speed) ASUS claim the board supports this speed, but a lot of folks in the ASUS forums are having problems. I managed to get it upto 1000MHz but it wasn't stable at that speed.
Other than that (with the RAM @ 800MHz) the board is great, it was easy to install, easy to fit the cpu heatsink and the bios was pretty staightforward too.
Rating: 90%
Review Title: Beat CPC's Overclock!
Verdict: Still good, loving this board for overclocking.
Managed to top the CPC overclock last night.
Was actually able to get my E6750 to boot into Windows @4GHz on air, but it wasn't stable.
Managed to get it stable enough to run 3DMark06 @3.84GHz, along with my insanely overclocked 8800GTX (also air cooled) I scored 14120
Have dropped the overclock to 3.8GHz and it seems to be really stable.
Thumbs up, but more so, from me.
Rating: 0%
Review Title: P5kc raid is a big problem
Verdict: good board if you are do not use raid
need to install one external drive to get raid or connect the internal HD to eSATA port located at the back of the computer.
The raid is using the old jmicron driver - NO intell driver.
Rating: 90%
Review Title: Works For Me
Verdict: Initial problems with memory, but all is now stable and overclocked nicely.
I too had memory troubles when I first got this mobo.
It formed part of my first Core 2 system having previously built several AMD S939 systems.
I tried everything, updating bios, swapping memory slots, reinstalling Windows, swapping power connectors, just about everything.
I even RMA'd one lot of Crucial PC-2 6400 memory as it was failing Memtest.
I am now using 2gigs of Crucial PC-2 8500 memory and I had the same problems initially.
BSOD's, programs dumping me to desktop, it even failed Memtest, all very annoying.
Rang up to RMA the memory again when a chance comment from one of OcUK's techy guys sorted all my problems.
He asked me if I'd set the right memory voltage in bios.
Until then I hadn't realised I had too.
Crucial DDR2 memory likes 2.2v but the default mobo setting is something like 1.8v
Since setting the right voltage everything has been great, the same memory passed Memtest, no BSOD's, brilliant.
Once my system was stable I overclocked my E6750 to 3.4GHZ and I'm sure I'll be able to match (if not better) the 3.66GHz of the CustomPC guys too.
The Asus P5KC gets a thumbs up from me.
Rating: 50%
Review Title: ASUS is no use with this one
Verdict: A terrible motherboard with unstable bluescreen crashes for me. The new BIOS does not help.
As per feature in the CPC there are horrible problems with RAM. I installed 2 GB Crucial PC2 8500 Ballistix RAM four months ago when first purchased. Could only run at 800MHz even after upgrading BIOS. Blue Screens started immediately when installing Vista Ultimate 32 bit. To cut a long story short this happened with Vista 64 and XP Prof. Always blue screens, with different error messages. Changed everything including cables.
The IDE connection is in a really bad place if you want to reach the DVD burnewr/player, so reccommend a long IDE cable.
Problems when trying to move SATA cables if using a 8800GTS PCIE 16 card - no space.
Had to keep resetting the BIOS. Moved from V701 to V903 and it was even worse at crashing.
Did not invest in DDR3 as it is not worth it.
Now have a Gigayte GA-P35-DSL3 , OK its only DDR2 but the Windows overclocking software is better and the crucial RAM runs at 1066MZ as it should, no crashing. Thanks God.
Thanks for wasting my £60 ASUS!
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