Asus P5E3 Premium/WiFi-AP @n

The board is extremely well built using only the best components as it should be for the price that you are paying. The P5E3 Premium coupled with the Intel® X3350 Core 2 Quad processor yielded excellent results in most of the non-overclocked benchmarks that we ran, especially those relating to memory.

For those of you that waited, and waited, and waited, for X48 to be some sort of groundbreaking chipset, we can do no more than chuckle. If you already have a good X38 motherboard, it's hard to recommend spending $350+ on a new motherboard, at least at this point. However, if you are wanting to build a top of the line system from the ground up, you could hardly do better than ASUS' new X48 motherboard, the ASUS P5E3 Premium.

I must admit that I don't like some of the cost cutting measures (leaving off a PCIe 1x slot and two USB ports) compared to the earlier X38 based board - however I do very much like the extra overclocking elbow room the board gave me. You may well say that an extra 95MHz is not a big deal - and you would largely be right - however it sure does feel nicer to achieve a higher overclock, and at a lower Vcore to boot. This board gave me the highest memory speeds I've yet obtained! Basically I think the P5E3 Premium rocks, and it definitely deserves an Overclocker's Award.

It has everything included: wireless and wired LAN, eight channel High Definition sound, all the USB connectivity you could need, energy saving features and so much more. During testing, things went as planned without usual intricacies to work through, which was a nice change of pace. If you want a "green" motherboard that comes with everything you need to get started, keep the P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP@n on your short list.

ASUS offers jaw-dropping features in its P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n Edition motherboard, but at an equally heart-stopping price.