Asus P5K3 Premium: Part 1

Rear I/O

Unsurprisingly the rear I/O of the P5K3 Premium is exactly the same as the P5K3 Deluxe. It includes no less than six USB ports, PS2 keyboard (but no mouse), optical and RCA digital S/PDIF, two eSATA ports, a 6-pin Firewire socket and two RJ45 sockets for both Gigabit Ethernets. The left port is attached to the PCI-Express Marvell chipset, whereas the right port is the PCI-based Realtek chipset.

The wireless antenna is squeezed in at the end next to the six 3.5mm audio jacks providing the 7.1 channel audio as well as separate microphone and line ports.

We liked it with the Deluxe and we still think it's a great setup for many people. Obviously, if you still require the use of a legacy serial or parallel port then you're out of luck but the Deluxe and Premium are meant for the digital home, for which connections like eSATA, Firewire and plenty of USB ports are essential.

BIOS

There's very little difference between the P5K3 Deluxe and the Premium models, with a couple of changed memory timings and that's it.

The memory voltage is the same 1.5-2.25V for DDR3, of which, 2.25V is pretty hefty given that Asus only offers a three year warranty whereas in comparison discrete memory suppliers like Corsair and OCZ give a lifetime warranty instead. Asus gives plenty of play in the other voltages, with a relatively liberal adjustments for the CPU, CPU PLL and FSB termination. There is also control for reference voltage multipliers for both, as well as "clock overcharging".

The advanced features are comprehensive and the BIOS allows the chipset to support additional straps now up to DDR2-1333MHz but only when using a 1333MHz FSB processor. Using a 1066MHz FSB processor only allows a maximum memory frequency of 1066MHz.

Asus includes the custom Q-fan control, Asus EZ Flash 2, Asus OC Profile, Ai Net 2, AI NOS, AI overclocking and CGI Function. The AI NOS has been updated from a previously tame 15 percent, to a ballsy 30 percent maximum overclock. It also includes an sensitivity adjustment allowing you to make it overclock only on real heavy sustained load, normal load, or make it really sensitive in case you don't have enough MHz to play back MP3s or move a mouse.