Of all motherboard manufacturers out in the market today, few can compare to ASRock when it comes to building on a budget. In keeping with that tradition, the new P55DE3 announced by ASRock should appeal to those with tight wallets.

Some say that the newest technology doesn’t come cheap, however there are a certain few out there who tend to disagree. Built on the latest P55 Intel Chipset, the P55DE3 is feature rich and promises to be a very good upgrade to anyone wanting i5 technology.

The first feature this board offers is something that will appeal to anyone with the last generation Intel Core 2 processors. Built-in is support for your older LGA 775 style coolers to be mounted right onto this board without any new hardware required. Although this idea is not new for P55 Boards, EVGA having a similar setup on some of their offerings, it is a welcome addition that helps curb the spending when upgrading. Dual-channel DDR3 RAM is of course standard fair with Lynnfield, and the P55DE3 can handle up to 2400MHZ, overclocked of course. On the graphics end of the spectrum, this board’s twin PCI-e slots support CrossFire running at 16x and 4x respectively.

Connectivity is provided by 4 front SATA 3GB/s ports supporting the most common RAID configurations. Powered USB and eSATA is also available using the rear connectors on the I/O panel. This gives the end-user a very well-rounded board for their i5 upgrade.

Pricing and availability have yet to be announced, but coming from ASRock we can expect this board to be set below all the current offerings out there today. Features and specifications can be found on the product page here.