Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus

Overclocking & Stability

We were able to get the board to reach a front side bus speed of 446MHz stable (1785MHz QDR in the BIOS), but it would boot into windows at 450MHz (1800MHz QDR) in unlinked mode, however in linked mode, sync memory we were able to reach 475MHz (1900MHz QDR). This was at 1.5V northbridge, 1.45V VTT and 1.4V Hyper Transport and a 6x multiplier on the Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme x6800 CPU.

We found because of the simpler heat-piping structure used to cool the bridges and power regulation components, they ran very hot compared to the Striker Extreme. Additional cooling to the heatpipe area definitely aided stability but didn't help increase the bus speed further. Since the PCBs and BIOS are essentially the same, and they both use solid state capacitors, with overall better cooling the P5N32-E SLI Plus could clock near the Striker Extreme in some cases.

In stability testing we found both instances of Prime95 crashed within tens of minutes of starting the tests but FarCry and IOMeter looped for the entire time without issue. We tested Prime95 independently and found the board would run both instances on both cores successfully without issue. So extremely heavy multitasking on the CPU and memory may result in stability problems, but for the most part the board is exceptionally stable.

Conclusion

Despite the fact the board looks like it's missing half its limbs with the spare solder points everywhere the only essential thing missing is eSATA, and even then proportionally not many people use external hard disks. Overall the board still works well, although there are a few issues with the IDE orientation facing the memory slots, the space around the CPU area, although slightly more than the Striker Extreme (we installed a Zalman CNPS9700 without issue), and the bottom PCI-Express x16 slot turning your second graphics card into a vacuum cleaner for the bottom of your case.

Whilst the funky LEDs are pretty cool, they are still a bit of a novelty and power/reset/clear CMOS switches and rear I/O LCD are extremely useful for bench testing (even more so if you enjoy doing it in the dark?!) but not essential. There is still the available PCI slot as well as a PCI-Express x8 slot for a serious RAID card or otherwise, without sacrificing the use of SLI. However the southbridge still supports 6 devices with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5, or a combination of either.

The P5N32-E SLI Plus is approximately the same price as the P5N32-E SLI. The difference being that the non-plus uses the 680i northbridge, but sacrifices the all solid state capacitors for a mixture between electrolytic and solid caps. The cheapest we found the P5N32-E SLI Plus at the time of writing was £133, but prices seem to vary quite a bit upwards of this, so as always make sure you shop around. For £130ish it seems like a great buy, but some places are selling it for around £150 which stretches it into being "expensive", considering the competition.

The vanilla P5N-E based on the 650i northbridge, but uses the older and less feature-rich southbridge with dual PCI-Express x8 slots instead of x16s. This can be bought for around £50 less than the cheapest P5N32-E SLI Plus, so while the P5N32-E SLI Plus is an absolute bargain compared to the Striker Extreme, it is still a lot more money than the vanilla 650i motherboard you can buy. Having said that, that extra £50 buys you the Striker Extreme base, all solid caps and a far better southbridge: so the value is still strongly maintained.

In comparison the Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi AP and Gigabyte GA965P DS3/4 can be had for a little cheaper, while the Asus Commando and Gigabyte GA965P DQ6 are a bit more expensive. However the P965 chipset doesn't feature unlinked memory and CPU bus clocking as found on NVIDIA's nForce 650i/680i series. Because of this fact, the P965 boards have much better memory efficiency, but Intel's Core 2 Duo processors are not dependent on memory bandwidth as much as tight memory timings, which the P5N32-E SLI Plus is very capable of doing.

In all the Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus isn't cheap enough to make it a no-brainer purchase, but it is definitely within the £100-£150 range of acceptable cost for an enthusiast or gamer, given the value of the features and overclocking potential it holds. The P5N32-E SLI Plus may have the bare essentials but it's still packed with the same Striker soul, even if the heart has been changed from 680i to 650i. We feel this matters little, and the cooling is probably of greater effect than the chipset substitution.

Final Thoughts...

Whilst Asus has created a confusing range of mid-high end motherboards with slight variations, the P5N32-E SLI Plus appears to have hit the nail pretty much on the head. It still has the essential features needed for overclocking and stability, while still offering a decent I/O feature set at a price that's not going to mean selling your lungs. We can't argue with overclocking near to what the Striker Extreme is capable of for half the price. This makes the Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus a definite consideration for your next Core 2 upgrade.