Conclusion

Once again, ASUS has delivered an exceedingly competent product at a price that almost seems too good to be true. The P5Q PRO enters the mainstream market packed to the gills with great features such as dual mechanical PCI-E x16 (8x electrical) 2.0 slots, three PCI-E 1x slots, eight SATA-II ports, eSATA and FireWire connectivity, top-notch RAID capabilities, twelve USB 2.0 ports, 8-channel high-definition audio codec, 8-phase power design for the CPU, 2-phase power design for the chipset and memory, ExpressGate, EPU…and the list goes on. Many of these features were high-end exclusives just a few months ago, so it’s a tremendous achievement to pack all this functionality into a mainstream price point.

When it comes to build quality, ASUS has not held back either. The board is built on a sturdy 6-layer PCB, and it looks great in dark brown. It also features long-lasting solid aluminium electrolyte capacitors and quality Yageo ferrite chokes in all critical locations.

The BIOS has everything that we have come to expect from a mainstream ASUS product, which is to say enough features and tweakability to satisfy all but the most ardent enthusiast. It is also clever and functional enough to be accessible to novices, and even allow those users to achieve a respectable overclock while maintaining the majority of settings on AUTO. For the more experienced overclocker, the P5Q PRO and its P45 chipset do not disappoint, and will likely only be held back by your choice of components.

On the other hand the AUTO voltage settings are a little high for our liking, but if you are reading this review, you are already an enlightened consumer and can easily fix the problem by manually inserting your own voltage settings in the BIOS.

On the layout front, we find the floppy and IDE connector placement to be slightly impractical, but this is a relatively minor issue given the rapidly declining popularity of these two interfaces. The P5Q PRO’s biggest flaw is the fact that the use of a dual-slot graphics card in the second PCI-E x16 slot blocks access to a few SATA-II ports. We fully acknowledge that only a small fraction of users who buy a motherboard in this price range will utilize CrossFire, but since the capability is there, the functionality should be there too, and without compromises.

Overall though, for about $135 CDN, the P5Q PRO provides excellent Bang for the Buck, and an abundance of capabilities that we have never seen before in a mainstream motherboard. It is a worthwhile upgrade choice for those who are interested in trying CrossFire, or simply for those who want a stable, overclockable, fully-featured motherboard that performs well and won’t break the bank.