PK5C vs P35

[Oatmealman15]

I was just wondering what would be a better choice of motherboard to go with an E8400 processor. The Asus PK5C or the gigabyte GA-P35C?

[iiiprimeiii]

i think either one. both have been suggested on here. i ordered the gigabyte because it had better reviews on newegg and people in this forum were having problems with it. i think the gigabyte has a few more features on it not to sure though.

[The Wise Monkey]

I have the Gigabyte Mobo, and its as solid as a rock - never given me any trouble. Plus I've got my E6750 oced to 3.2 on stock voltages, while everyone with the P5K is having trouble at that speed.

My advice would be to go for the Gigabyte, but its the P5K that has more features. :)

[Jamie Nixx]

No problems with the P5KC or the Gigabyte this end.

Got an E6400 at 3.6Ghz on the Asus and E8400 on the Gigabyte.

The Asus is much more of an enthusiasts board, more features, better overclocker. looks better ect ect ect. :D

The Gigabyte does its job quietly, enough features to keep you happy and its pretty solid.

[shyster]

I had a question I was hoping someone could answer.

I was looking at getting the 8800gts, it has a good sale right now, and the p35, but it does not look like the p35 is able to support the double slot that the 8800gts requires. I do not really know how it works, but I thought that when they were a double slot it requires both the pci x16 and a regular pci slot to plug into.

Help would be appreciated.

If it will not work, can anybody suggest another good motherboard that supports the new e8400 and is reasonably priced?

[Jamie Nixx]

Double slot doesn't mean it uses two slots, it means it takes up the space occupied by two slots on the motherboard because of the depth of the card.

[shyster]

So Jamie,

You mention that the p5kc is a better oc'ing board. Have you overclocked your e8400? I have seen is numerous reviews you can get it to 4gb easy, so my question is can you do it with either the p5kc or the p35?

I am wondering because I do not know much about overclocking, I know it has to do with the bios setup and that has to do with the support the board is given via the company. However asus, america at least seems to be dropping the ball all over the place, miss labeling bios (I read somewhere the p5k bios got mislabeled as the p5kc's bios and killed a few peoples chips), some peoples (boba & barrister) boards not being able to read the new e8400. I do not know if that was because the boards were doa, or some malfunction with them, but asus support does not seem to be too helpful either.

All said I would rather choose the p5kc because you seem to say it is better, and it is cheaper than the p35, but if I have to rma it the price will become the same plus loss of time with new computer.

Ideas and opinions would be great.

Monkey feel free to chime it also since you seem to have some different perspectives on things.

Like you say the p35 board has better support for the native voltage when overclocking.

[The Wise Monkey]

Well, Jamie has recommended the P5K for a while now, but this may be one of the times where the differences between the US and the UK are in our favour for once. :)

Since so many people have had trouble with the P5K, not just on this board but on newegg as well, I would suggest going for the P35.

[shyster]

Curses!

Two hours to late Monkey. Damn you English and your time difference :p .

I placed my order at around midnight my time last night, about two hours before you posted it seems, and I went for the p5kc since it is cheaper and some people have been able to get it to work. Hopefully I just get lucky.

Other than that, would you say it is worth overclocking your processor? Rob says on his site that it reduces the life of the unit. Is this always true or only if you do a bad job of overclocking it? I would prefer it lives longer for the most part than giving me extra power which I may or may not need.

[chunkylover53]

The P5KC has utilities that run in Windows that allow you to "overclock" (AI Booster, etc.) at a moments notice. I did not have any luck with those at all, and I found that my system was very unstable when trying to use the overclock utilities. I ended up doing it in the BIOS, and I have found a very stable overclock on my Q6600 @ 3.1Ghz (stock is 2.4Ghz). I did a LOT of reading, and forced myself to learn about the BIOS.

To answer your question, I have no doubt that it shortens the life of the components, but I'm doing it anyway. :D The P5KC has multiple "profiles" in the BIOS. I have a stock setting profile that I run 90% of the time, and I have an OC'd setting that I run when I am doing heavy video editing work.

How much more performance am I getting? Hmmmm, yeah, maybe I should look into that… thanks for reminding me… I’ll run a few benchmarks this weekend to test both profiles and see what I get!

Just curious, which processor did you end up going with?

[The Wise Monkey]

Oc'ing will definitely shorten the life span of your components, plus it puts your warranty on shaky ground, so its really up to you. The most important thing is to take it slowly - I posted a good tutorial in the Overclocking forum, so you might want to check that out. :)

[AFMedic]

shoot, i ordered the p5k-c last night also. i also got the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W and eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB SSC. am i in trouble?

[shyster]

Yeah I got the exact same stuff as AFMedic only I got the 512 gts because it was on sale.

So:

e8400 wolfdale CPU
asus p5k-c motherboard
evg-a 8800GTS 512

So I might be screwed, I will just hope I get lucky.

[AFMedic]

is overclocking really necessary anyways? i mean, aren't the video cards good enough that we wouldn't need to overclock?

[shyster]

Normally as I understand it, you would not overclock a video card, at least not as often.

You would usually overclock a processor, the motherboard, or ram so as to increase the speed of your computers functionality, especially if you are doing video encoding, or just want to show off to your friends when play a game.

Of course this is as I understand it and could be totally wrong.

[chunkylover53]

Guys, don't panic yet. It could be that the last two P5KC's that went out were a fluke, or we could have an all out P5KC revolt on our hands. Between the two of you, Boba (& Barrister maybe), there are two new P5KC's and two RMA'd ones that are being replaced. And if I'm not mistaken, all 4 of you are going with the E8400. Could be a busy weekend of advice for Jamie & Wise Monkey coming up! :)

As far as OC'g, the tutorial that The Wise Monkey posted is outstanding. In fact, that site he posted from is an awesome place for a lot of stuff. But whether you do it or not, you will first need to get up and running on fail-safe/default settings in the BIOS.

You'll have plenty of time to talk youself into doing a lot of stupid things once you're up and running and run your first benchmark test... just like I did! :D

[AFMedic]

i can't wait. all of my stuff should be coming in approx 3 days and hopefully i'll be off that day. should i connect the new build only to my big screen or should i connect it to my vga monitor and big screen. what should i do with my hp pavilion i'm using now? i hope you get your stuff soon shyster and it all works out.

[The Wise Monkey]

To be honest, overclocking is really not necessary at all. No matter what you buy, I'm sure you will be satisfied. If you want to coax that little bit extra out of your hardware, then overclocking is the way to go. If it doesn't bother you about an extra 5%, then leave your stuff alone. :)

[iiiprimeiii]

well i ordered the p35 gigabyte it should be here today so i will be able to let everyone know how it works out within the next couple days :D who knows maybe ill be the one in trouble.