ASUS P5B-E Motherboard Review :: Setup and Installation

Setting up a computer is of course second nature to me by now after four years working for Motherboards.org. A couple of things stood out to me as a reviewer on setup. First issue I had was the placement of the IDE controller It is on the far left hand bottom corner of the board which meant that the IDE cable had to be routed from the CD-ROM on the top of the case around all the other cables in the system. The second issue I had was with the positioning of the Chassis fan header. The installation of a 8800GTX caused the Chassis fan header to be blocked.

Front Panel

Installing the 3.8 GHz Pentium 670 is a simple matter of removing the cover to the LGA-775 Socket and inserting the CPU. One of the keys of installation is the proper alignment of the CPU into the Socket. There's only one way to put it in but you need to be careful not to put it in at an angle. Once the CPU is properly installed, lower the cover, flip the lever and you're ready for the thermal paste. I like to use Artic Silver 5 to cover the CPU. Just put a small drop onto the CPU top and cover it with your heatsink, locking the pins into place.

Once the CPU is installed, the next step is installing the memory. We use Crucial Ballistix DDR2 667MHz memory in our testing. The memory was correctly identified as running in Dual Channel mode. Dual Channel mode requires like memory sticks and placement in like-colored DIMM slots. The P5B-E can have up to 8GB of memory, but more than 4GB requires a 64-bit Operating System like the new Windows Vista or 64-bit XP. ASUS does not include a boot up floppy for SATA RAID installation. If you want to install a RAID array, one may be necessary for Windows XP installation. ASUS has put the drivers on the driver CD, which you can use to make your own floppy either at boot startup or in a Windows environment. I prefer that motherboard manufacturers include the floppy, as it makes installation easier.

The P5B-E was completely stable throughout our rigorous testing regimen and stability testing. Generally, I like to use the motherboard for at least a week as my primary computer for the course of a review. Three things are added or changed from our test system to ensure compatibility, a ATI X1950XTX card, a ASUS 8800GTX card and a TV Wonder 650 card all operated with expected parameters with no issues. One small issue occurred when the LAN went out on the board during everyday use. I'm sure it was just a minor issue but I needed to install a LAN card to use the motherboard.

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