Review : Asus P5Q Deluxe

[Power_user_EX]

Hi guys , just bought a new system with p5q deluxe.

Glad to be one of few having p5q deluxe as of now!

Here's my review on Asus P5Q deluxe :

I had narrowed down on Asus Maximus Formula , Maximus 2 formula and P5Q deluxe and finally went for P5Q Deluxe @ 12.5k (incl. Vat).
AFAIK around the ending of August P5Q deluxe was not available no where in Lamington road and in Navi-Mumbai , hence I had to specially order it from my dealer via Rashi Peripherals. Finally on 6th Sept i got my new mobo.

The first time u look at the board i bet ull to will fall in love with gorgeous looking & asthetically pleasing board! The P5Q deluxe is a part of Asus's P5Q series boards and is consists of Intel's P45 and IC10R chipset. P45 is on of the most stable chipset by intel and overclocks to 2000Mhz FSB stablly!!! P45 also consumes less power and dissipates less heat thanks to its 55nm fabrication process as compared to X38 and X48. It Supports DDR3 as well as DDR2 and PCI-E 2.0. P5Q Deluxe supports DDR2 upto 1200Mhz and has 5 PCI-E slots(16x,8x,4x,1x,1x) . When using single Graphic card the blue pci-e slot uses full 16x 2.0 while using 2 Graphic cards in cross-fire the bandwidth gets divided to 8x and 8x but its PCI-2.0 so no bottlenecks even at 8x bandwidth. Also PCI 1.x 16x = PCI 2.0 8x! Many results show that the lastest ATI 4800 series Graphics cards are in no way bottlenecked coz the PCI 2.0 8x bandwidth is more than enough.
P5Q deluxe is having Asus's Latest 16-phase power design for CPU , 2-phase power for Northbrigde and Ram and
also the much publicised EPU-6 engine.

About packaging & features :

In the box :
1) Eight SATA cables including four with 90 degree connectors
2) Two Molex to four SATA power connectors
3) Asus Q-Connector
4) Asus Q-Shield soft rear I/O shield
5) Manual, logo and driver DVD
6) 1 IDE and 1 floppy cables
7) Optional heatpipe cooling fan
8 ) Two USB port and one 4-pin Firewire PCI bracket

Features:
1) Support for 65nm and 45nm Intel socket LGA775 processors - Core 2 Extreme, Quad, Duo, Pentium Extreme, 4 and D.
2) Asus EPU 6-Engine and 16 phase CPU power design
3) Intel P45 north bridge
4) Intel ICH10R south bridge
5) Four DDR2 DIMMs supporting 667/800/1,066 and 1,200MHz memory up to 16GB in dual channel mode !!!
6) Two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (in either x16/x1 or x8/x8 arrangements - blue @ 16x , black @ 8x)
7) One PCI-Express x16 slot (at x4 bandwidth)
8 ) Two PCI-Express x1 slots
9) Two PCI slots
10) Six red ICH10R SATA 3Gbps ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5
11) Two orange Silicon Image Sil5723 SATA ports supporting "Super Speed" or "EZ Backup" with DriveXpert
12) One Marvell 88SE6121 controller supporting one IDE channel and one eSATA 3Gbps port
13) One Marvell 88E8056 PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet
14) One Marvell 88E8011 PCI Gigabit Ethernet
15) ADI AD2000B 7.1 channel High-Definition audio codec
16) LSI L-FW3227 PCI IEEE1394a Firewire controller supporting two ports
17) Ten USB 2.0 ports (four through pin-outs, six on the rear I/O)
18 ) Asus ExpressGate SSD
19) Asus DieHard BIOS, Q-Shield, Q-Connector, AI Booster with Precision Tweaker BIOS function and AI Suite

The orange Sata ports controlled by Silicon Image Sil5723 controller has Drive Xpert tecnhology
- i.e supports EZ backup and SuperSpeed functions - can be configured either frm Windows , Bios.
I really liked the express gate feature which boots in about 3 to 4 secs i can easily surf net by connecting pc to the router!
Apart frm it EPU-6 , AI-Suite , PC Probe and drive Xpert and really impressive!!!
The on-board power & reset switches really rock!

Pros :
- Packed with all kinds of features
- Very overclockable
- Stable at high FSB
- Future proof!
- Supports upto 16 GB DDR2 @ 1200Mhz max
- ICH10R Southbridge
- ExpressGate
- 8 sata Ports + eSata + Firewire + 10 USB ports
- Dual Marvell Gigabit LAN
- On board Power and rest switch.
- Drive Xpert
- Supports PCI 2.0 @ 16x or PCI 2.0 @ 8x/8x
- Supports all the latest processors from Intel
- CrossFire ready
- Runs cool
- Low priced compared to performance and features
- All capacitors used as Solid State Capacitors
- Bios can updated with out the fearing of it getting corrupt

Cons :
- No DDR3 support might be the only one against it. (But whats the use of the higher clocked ram with poor timings ?)
- Else -- None

Performace : 10/10
Value for money : 9/10
Features : 9.5/10
Overclockability : 10/10
Future proof : hmmm... I leave it to digit users

Here are Some Pics :

[john_the_ultimate]

Nice purchase, congrats.
You could have also gone for P5Q-E (8-phase) got almost same feature n looks......... do you think there would be a difference in performance between 8-phase n 16-phase power design.
P5Q-E would have been cheaper. Most review don't show much/no difference between P5Q DLX n P5Q-E.
Anyways, post some numbers to really show the performance of this beauty

[Power_user_EX]

P5Q deluxe has more advatages over 'P5E' ( X38 ) and not P5Q-E.

1) ExpressGate
2) 2 - phase for NB
3) 2 - phase for RAM
4) Stable than X38 at 2000Mhz + FSB - in most cases.
5) P45 consumes less power than X38
6) Runs cooler
7) IC10R southbridge
8 ) Drive Expert
9) 16-Phase power design
10) New ADI2008B sound codec chip as compared to ADI1988 on supremeFX
11) 8 sata ports
12) EPU-6 Engine
and many more....

WIll post my OCing pics soon

[john_the_ultimate]

You then must have not read the specs of both the mobo. There are just two differences:

1) P5Q Deluxe has 16-phase power management for the cpu, whereas P5Q-E has 8-phase.

2) The Deluxe has onboard SSD storage for ExpressGate, whereas P5Q-E doesn't.

Even the component layout is exactly the same(pull up the photo of both the mobos side by side and see for yourself).

Yes, one more differnce, the EPU in Deluxe has a heatpipe connecting it to the NB heatsink and the P5Q-E doesn't have the heatpipe.

That's why I had said that you could have gone for P5Q-E, instead of the deluxe version and could have saved around 2-2.5k

Anyways, as I had mentioned earlier, it is a very good purchase indeed and do post some numbers.

[Power_user_EX]

Originally Posted by john_the_ultimate

You then must have not read the specs of both the mobo. There are just two differences:

1) P5Q Deluxe has 16-phase power management for the cpu, whereas P5Q-E has 8-phase.

2) The Deluxe has onboard SSD storage for ExpressGate, whereas P5Q-E doesn't.

Even the component layout is exactly the same(pull up the photo of both the mobos side by side and see for yourself).

Yes, one more differnce, the EPU in Deluxe has a heatpipe connecting it to the NB heatsink and the P5Q-E doesn't have the heatpipe.

That's why I had said that you could have gone for P5Q-E, instead of the deluxe version and could have saved around 2-2.5k

Anyways, as I had mentioned earlier, it is a very good purchase indeed and do post some numbers.

Thx for correcting me! I was comparing it with P5E which is an X38 board. In other forums ppl had compared it with P5E and i was in that flow and insted of P5E i wrote P5Q-E - i just saw P5 and E but forgot the Q . Anyways i have edit my previous post.

for eg see my following points:

4) Stable than X38 at 2000Mhz + FSB - in most cases.
5) P45 consumes less power than X38
6) Runs cooler
7) IC10R southbridge
10) New ADI2008B sound codec chip as compared to ADI1988 on supremeFX

[amrawtanshx]

Originally Posted by Power_user_EX

Cons :
- No DDR3 support might be the only ine against it. (But whats the use of the higher clocked ram with poor timings ?)

Correct

Originally Posted by Power_user_EX

Performace : 10/10
Value for money : 9/10
Features : 9.5/10
Overclockability : 10/10
Future proof : yes

Seems good.
Nice review.

[aytus]

nothing is future proof btw. nehalem anyone?? btw nice purchase. i think u shud have gone with a newer quad instead of 6600l .. btw in the pic .. looks like three pci x slots ? wots the third one for.. ? soory for being nooby.. also is their enuf space between the two pci slots to fit some heavy cards with real heavy coolers// mostly the ones that take u-p two back slots?

[Power_user_EX]

Dude pci-x and pci-e r diff. Yes it has 3 PCI-E slots. Atleast 2 280GTXs can fit fine.
My hd4850 takes 2 slots - its a new desgined card by sapphire with dual slot heatsink.
Newer quads r not overclockable due to higher FSB and for me Q6600 seems to overclock till 3.7 Ghz - all stable.Haven't tried beyond 3.7Ghz - will try upto 4 Ghz.Max possible overclock with q9300 is 3.5Ghz and it has 6MB cache where as q6600 has 8MB cache.