Asus P5K Deluxe
Our first Intel P35 chipset motherboard is the Asus P5K Deluxe. I’ll let the pictures do the majority of the talking here and chime in on the new or unique features the board offers.
These are DDR2 memory slots, so don’t get the P5K Deluxe expecting to use any fancy new DDR3 sticks.
The Intel ICH9 completely drops the IDE channel from its feature list and as such the Asus engineers have included a JMicron chip that enables an IDE port as well as the external SATA connections.
Even though the north bridge on the P35 only supports a single x16 PCIe connection, Asus decided to split it up into two x8 PCIe slots in order to support AMD’s CrossFire technology on the motherboard. Other than that, the board offers a well rounded slot configuration with three legacy PCI slots and two x1 PCIe slots.
The Asus P5K Deluxe uses passive cooling on the chipsets as well as on the MOSFETs surrounding the CPU.
The P5K Deluxe sports only a SINGLE PS2 port, so keep that in mind as you look at the boards. It also has six USB 2.0 ports, both optical and coaxial digital audio output, dual Gigabit networking connections and 8-channel HD audio from an ADI 1988 chip. Also note the attachment on the far right that is the integrated Wireless LAN that supports 802.11g/b.
This shot is actually of parts from the P5K3; the only thing the P5K does NOT come with is the Asus fan for heat pipe spreader fins.
