Bearlake: MSI P35 Platinum, ASUS P5K/P5K3 Deluxe, GIGABYTE P35-DQ6

MSI P35 Platinum
The MSI board uses a Fintek F71882F6 controller to handle PS/2 and FDD controllers as well as hardware monitoring, while engaging a Marvell 88SE6111 for the IDE controller and one extra internal SATA connector, and VIA’s VT6308 for 1394 support. A Realtek RTL8168 handles the gigabit network duties while a Realtek ALC888T chip brings us sound, with the back plate supporting optical S/PDIF underneath the oddly elevated set of four USB ports, bringing the total to six. Two of the SATA ports supported by ICH9 have become eSATA, leaving five (including the Marvell-controlled one) for internal use. As tends to be the case with most high-end boards these days, solid capacitors are used exclusively.

MSI P35 Platinum

Of note is MSI’s rollercoaster inspired ‘Circu-Pipe’ heatpipe. Presumably this allows greater surface area for heat dissipation than just a straight pipe, while at the same time looking cool. It causes no clearance issues either – the same can’t be said of the southbridge heatsink though, which was high enough to leverage the rear of our 8800 GTX out of the PCIe slot. It still worked, but we wouldn’t be comfortable with mounting the board in a case unless we used a single-slot card.

Other layout problems arise with the 8-pin auxiliary power connector, which is hidden among the heat pipes, bringing potential cable routing issues. One SATA connector will be lost if you have a dual-slot, dual-card solution, which also makes access to the CMOS reset button difficult.

Otherwise everything is quite solid indeed, a standout feature being MSI’s super bright LED system on the board to diagnose hardware issues. It still requires you to delve into the manual to decode them much like beep errors, but thankfully identifies problems in much greater detail.

Overclocking was an interesting experience, the board not recovering gracefully from pushing it too far, requiring a straight CMOS clear every time. With the standard BIOS it didn’t peak 350MHz, but with a performance BIOS supplied by MSI (the features of which we’re told will filter into the normal BIOS as time progresses) allowed us to hit 460MHz Orthos stable.

SCORE: 7.5/10

ASUS P5K
The ASUS P5K follows in the traditions of ASUS’ well-known layout – which is a good thing, as it’s darn near perfect. The IDE connector is potentially difficult for those who have dual-graphics solutions, and the clear CMOS jumper is obscured by having a single dual-slot card. Expect to lose four SATA ports if you’ve parted with the shekels to purchase an 8800 GTX Ultra – although a vanilla Ultra doesn’t suffer from this problem.

Asus P5K

ASUS has opted to drop the PS/2 mouse port too, and replace it with two USB ports, so you don’t have to use extra headers on the board itself. The full six SATA ports are available on the interior, with a JMicron JMB363 chip powering two eSATA ports on the back and the single PATA connector. A Realtek RTL8110SC and Marvell 88E8056 handle the dual-gigabit Ethernet duties, while a Realtek RTL8187 handles the 802.11g built-in wireless. Sound is taken care of by the ADI1988B (with both coax and optical S/PDIF available), FireWire by the Agere L-FW3227 and the final auxiliary chip (wasn’t the point of chipsets to include everything required?) is the Winbond W83627DHG-A, which handles legacy IO and monitoring functions. Solid capacitors are here in abundance, and the board displays ASUS usual dedication to build quality. Overclocking almost matched that of the previous 965 boards, hitting 495MHz Orthos stable.

SCORE: 9.0/10

ASUS P5K3
ASUS’ P5K3 is for all intents and purposes exactly the same as the P5K, but supports DDR3 and comes with a slightly more elaborate heatpipe setup, suggesting the need to handle a bit more thermal stress. From a touch test the ASUS heatpiping certainly generated more heat than the Gigabyte and MSI solutions. The results below are taken with the RAM running at its default speed, the maximum overclock we could get out of the system being 485MHz on the FSB.

Asus P5K3

SCORE: 8.0/10

GIGABYTE P35-DQ6
GIGABYTE’s P35-DQ6 is the latest in its DQ6 range, and is a beast indeed. In fact probably too much of a beast – the Silent Pipe heatsinks are big enough in height to cause potential clearance problems with CPU HSFs. Our reference Scythe Ninja with some wrangling managed to fit on the board with the fan facing the rear as it should. Another problem is the ‘Crazy Cool’ heat spreader on the bottom – while it can be removed, the northbridge cooler is left unsecured as a result, making us a little nervous. Those with coolers that require custom backplates should perhaps steer clear. The only other layout problem is you can expect to lose a whack of four SATA ports if you go the dual-slot, dual-graphics path – single-slot dual-graphics means at most you’ll only lose one.

Gigabyte P35-DQ6

The rest of the board is excellent, with the Realtek RTL8111B managing the gigabit Ethernet, the ITE IT8718F looking after legacy IO (curiously GIGABYTE has still included the parallel and serial ports on the back by default) and monitoring, a JMicron controller dealing with two extra internal SATA ports on top of the six managed by ICH9, the Realtek ALC889A chip doing sound (with both coax and optical S/PDIF on the back) and finally a Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 chip controls the FireWire.

The P35-DQ6 takes home the honour of being the first board through Atomic labs to be able to hit 500MHz FSB Orthos stable. Mind you it wouldn’t go any further, but this is a feat in itself. As with previous overclocking efforts on Gigabyte’s 965-DS3P, we found letting the board choose its own voltages got better results than manual tweaking, making overclocking easy.

SCORE: 8.0/10