Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n

Value:

Two hundred and sixty Great British Pounds. Even if you're more adept to pounds in weight the value is still significant and eye watering for a humble motherboard.

Do you really need 802.11 Draft-n wireless? Embedded Linux with a quick boot option? Super expensive DDR3? 500MHz+ overclocking (OK, so that one might be a definite tick box). But should we expect the X38 to achieve this anyway? After all it is Intel's first true performance chipset since the 975X, so better performance respective to what we already have is a bit of a given.

There's two parts to the value equation: Does it warrant the cost of materials provided and does it provide what is needed for the consumer? The first part - yes, absolutely. It overclocks fantastically, it is packed with the most cutting edge features you can find - the Draft-n wireless alone costs Asus a significant amount of money.

The Marvell Gigabit Ethernet could be (and should be?) replaced by Intel Pro Gigabit Ethernet considering the price of the board, but is that in replacement for the Draft-n wireless capabilities? After all, why would you have both? The bigger picture is that we still have three types of network connections which is more than any other manufacturer offers, which means the board can cater for just about everyone.

There are countless other features and an immaculate attention to detail that matters too. Even where there is the occasional niggle with the layout, you can tell it was a necessary sacrifice in order to include something else, because there are limits to where everything can be placed on a motherboard. It's the little things like the "spongy metal rear I/O" to stop you from cutting yourself, but still keep the EMI completely in your case, that make it an almost justifiable cost.

However, how much of it do you really need? Have we reached a point where our nature as ultra pedants has ultimately resulted in this product? We want it all, naturally, but most of us are not prepared to pay for it. In actual fact, we could live with the few minutes of fuss and use a normal metal rear I/O, or we'll buy a Draft-n wireless card or even a second Gigabit Ethernet card in the future if we think we really need it. After all, that's what the PCI(-Express) slots are for, right?

The MSI X38 Diamond will also be expensive but more in the range of the only other X38 board we've got a price on: the Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 which is currently around £176. That's £85 less than Asus' P5E3 Deluxe WiFi @n, and it's not as if this Asus board is in a complete league of its own, since the Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 has much (but not all) of the same features, but it, like other boards, will be a compromise of features and price.

Final Thoughts

We'd like to say that this is ridiculously expensive but when the Striker Extreme arrived several months ago at £230 we thought the same of that, but Asus sold them as fast as it could make them. Obviously, quite a few of you must have considered this hefty sum reasonable value for money and will probably think the same of the P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n.

If you're already prepared to drop several hundred on DDR3 anyway, then your budget should already be large enough to accommodate this, and in that respect it's quite well suited, just as long as you don't short change yourself on the CPU and graphics front. This is a board for those where money is no object in your next upgrade. If you're after a good all-rounder that's packed to the gills with features, this will absolutely be the motherboard for you. For those looking for something a bit more fiscally conservative, don't worry because the Maximus and normal Deluxe should be far cheaper.

So is the P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n the ultimate motherboard? Quite likely. But at the ultimate price? Most definitely.

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