Conclusion:

ASUS emphasizes the green features found on the P5K PRO in order to set it apart from the rather crowded Intel P35 based motherboard market. While the energy saving design is interesting and useful, what may be lost on some users is that your system won't lack power by being energy efficient. The P5K PRO proved it could perform as well as another Intel P35 based board during testing, but when the system wasn't cranking away in games or benchmarks it could reduce energy consumption by a significant percentage.

When people think of energy efficiency they may have the misconception that it has to equate to a lack of power and excitement. In terms of automobiles, perhaps thinking that all hybrids are something like a Prius. But what we have with the P5K PRO is a sporty, high performance model that just happens to have a smart design capable of saving energy. And if stock performance isn't enough, the P5K PRO reveals its hot rodding side with plenty of overclocking and optimizing features in the BIOS. With minimal effort the test system was capable of some impressive overclocks, like taking a 1333MHz FSB E6850 up to 1600MHz FSB or taking a 2.0GHz E2180 up to 3.0GHz.


On the downside of things we have some poorly positioned connectors as the main problem. While the test system was able to be installed without major issue, it doesn't look pretty and it took some extra creativity and time. The 20+4 pin power connection, HD audio header, CPU fan header, and SATA headers are all in locations that may present some sort of problem. Whether the issue is with cable management, ease of use, or interference with other system components, there are just more things to think about than you might experience on a board with more room to lay out such features.

Other than that, I did experience several crashes when playing around with the power saving features in AI Gear3. While the middle of the road options seemed to work fine, if I picked the highest or the lowest power savings options the system would immediately reboot and resort to the previous configuration. The lesson learned was to save everything before playing around with the power settings, as the results were initially somewhat unpredictable. I am a fan of doing most of the tweaking in the BIOS, and find that software like this is often a bit buggy. It wasn't a surprise to me to have some issues, but it just happens to be that there is no other way to access these features.

A search of PriceGrabber returns just one store carrying the P5K PRO, and it happens to be Newegg.com. At $129.99 it is competitively priced with other P35 motherboards, but the up front cost doesn't address the total picture. The green features, including EPU, may wind up saving you a significant amount of money. Say your computer is idling for just 12 of the 24 hours in a day; with the P5K PRO set to medium power savings it could save close to $33 per year in energy (when compared to the P5KC and an electric rate of $0.15/KWH).

Given the performance, overclocking capabilities, and the energy saving green features, the ASUS P5K PRO Intel P35 ATX motherboard would definitely be easy to recommend, and therefore it earns the award of "Highly Recommended".


Pros:

» Tweaker friendly BIOS
» Overclocked well
» EPU and other green features can save you some green
» Competitively priced

Cons:

» Poorly positioned features such as the 20+4 pin connection
» EPU control in AI Gear3 is a bit buggy

Special thanks to ASUS for providing the ASUS P5K PRO Intel P35 Green ATX Motherboard to Bigbruin.com for review!