ASUS P5K3 Premium Black Pearl Edition @ Hardwarezone
Hardwarezone review the ASUS P5K3 Premium Black Pearl Edition motherboard which features Intel’s P35 chipset and 2GB of integrated DDR3 memory. This means you can’t upgrade the system memory with this board. Hardwarezone give this board a final score of 4.5/5 along with the “Most Overclockable Product Award” and write:
Put all your fears aside, the P5K3 Premium does not disappoint. The quality of the build and components used to make the P5K3 Premium Black Pearl Edition are some of the best to ever make way into a motherboard. The DDR3 memory integration is extremely well done and its performance is superb. Based on every benchmark that we ran for this review, the stock settings of the Qimonda memory on the board puts the P5K3 Premium ahead of the P5K3 Deluxe that was configured with retail over-the-shelf memory modules. This shows ASUS’ commitment into making the P5K3 Premium extremely competitive with current and future products.
In our opinion, this was a move that had to be made because of the permanent nature of integrated memory. Yes, you will not be able to upgrade your memory and that is something that cannot be helped, but 2GB can last most people till the next motherboard upgrade comes along. What can be helped though is the available bandwidth of the onboard memory. Depending on the CPU you use, the memory can scale from DDR3-1066 to beyond DDR3-1600, while maintaining pretty tight timings. ASUS made sure though that the memory chosen for the P5K3 Premium will outlast and outperform the competition for a long time coming.
Read the full review of the ASUS P5K3 Premium Black Pearl Edition motherboard here.