ASUS P5B Intel LGA775 Platform - Intel P965

This is a great choice for the budget-minded enthusiast or even a beginner putting together his or her first computer build who wants to try some over-clocking with the Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs. I was looking to upgrade from a three year old Pentium 4 AGP system. I needed to upgrade but the timing wasn't right to spend $1200 - $1500 on a new build so I was looking for performance at bargain prices

Having used ASUS motherboards with good results for several years, I began looking at ASUS motherboards that support the Core 2 Duo processors with room to upgrade in the future. I chose the P5B over the P5B -E and P5B-deluxe because of price and because the features that came with the newer, more expensive editions are not important to me.

I've only had one mild issue in that I had to flash to a newer BIOS in order for the board to fully recognize the e4300 CPU. The system booted up fine with the original BIOS and the system functioned, but I had a warning during the boot process that indicating that the CPU was not recognized. Updating the BIOS was easy and well explained in the motherboard manual so I was past that in just a few minutes. There is some Vcore droop between the BIOS Vcore setting and the actual readings. This didn't cause me any problems.

I gradually worked my way from the stock 1.8ghz (Bus Speed 200x9) to a high of 3.3ghz (Bus Speed 367x9) at a BIOS vcore setting of 1.50 and passed a 3 hour Orthos testing. My over clock goal was 3.0ghz so after seeing what could be done considering CPU heat, I backed off on the settings to my 3.0ghz goal and passed a 10.5 hour Orthos Blend test at a Vcore setting of 1.35 and with CPU temps under full load of ~55c using TAT and 44c using Core Temp with an aftermarket heat-sink / fan.

This motherboard performed very nicely and never gave me any issues while taking my over-clock to 83% before CPU heat under a heavy load began to reach the limits of my comfort level. Now, at 3.0ghz & a 66% over-clock I am running stable and cool, and all at a budget price.