ASUS P5B-V Review

Overall Rating

Fan speed controller, ability to control overclocking from within Windows.

Lack of LPT port (others boards in P5B series have one!)
Problems with onboard sound and after system reset.
The manual is poor in some respects.

The onboard sound makes twittering noises, a pulse every second and when applications are working or the screen is scrolled. Also a beeping noise when windows are minimised / maximised. This can be stopped by switching the record input device to "stereo mix".
If the bios is set to check the cpu fan speed there is often a problem when a system reset is performed. The bios locks up after the memory check, sometimes falsely reporting that the cpu fan has stopped.

Members' Comments onPoxyPig's Review

• PoxyPig on 22nd Aug 2008

  The Ai Suite software which comes with this board is without doubt the worst piece of software I have ever had the misfortune to load onto any computer. V1.01.23, which came on the disc with the motherboard, draws a very confused interface window with double copies of buttons before locking up and eventually causing system instabilities. V1.03.29, which was obtained from the Asus web site, starts up O.K. on about 60% of occasions, otherwise it locks up and has to be terminated manually. The interface window has microscopic buttons and text, some of which does not fit the available space. There is no useful help.
  
  Ai Nap: Appears not to perform as stated in the user guide. The video output is turned off but the hard drives and fans remain running. Ai Gear: A system restart is demanded after any setting change but then no change whatever appears to be made. It refuses to do anything if the motherboard is in overclocking mode.
  
  Advanced Q-Fan: The drop-down list button and 'enabled' tick box shown in the user guide are both absent. Appears to allow the fan speed to be altered but no change actually takes place even after a system restart.
  
  Ai Booster: It is unclear from the user guide how this utility is supposed to work. It appears that both the cpu frequency and ratio can be set using the spanner button. The cpu ratio says BiosErrOptidx and is 0.0 on the dropdown box. This cannot be changed. Setting a 10% cpu overclock caused this clock speed to be set in the BIOS after a system restart but the cpu stubbornly remained at its standard frequency!
  
  Ai N.O.S.: Again the user guide is unclear about exactly how this utility is supposed to work. The settings 'sensitivity' and 'mode' are unexplained. By setting N.O.S. mode to manual and mode to 110% it was possible to get the cpu overclocked, but only after a system restart - hardly 'non-delay' overclocking! With the sensitivity set at either 'sensitive' or 'heavy load' the cpu was running overclocked at just 1% cpu activity. Any change of settings requires another system restart.