Asus K8V Deluxe

The Asus K8V Deluxe is a well featured board with both IDE and SATA RAID and 3com Gigabit networking. It is based on the VIA K8T800 chipset, so the 3com Gigabit networking branches off the PCI Bus, rather than having a direct link from the north bridge, such as the nForce 250 Gb provides. This will limit its performance but some buyers will be pleased to have recognisably high quality networking on board. The board supports a special Wifi module, which is not included but is available separately at a small cost.

It is hard to fault the layout of the K8V. There is more than enough room between the graphics card and the RAM slot latches and the ATX power leads avoid crossing the CPU area. All the drive connectors are on the right hand side of the board, helping to keep the cabling neat and there are no capacitors around the CPU socket lugs, making heat sink installation even easier. The only problem is the AGP retaining catch, which like on most boards, is very difficult to release when you have a high end graphics card with a large cooler, which tends to cover the little lever.

The manual is a thick booklet, containing plenty of information. Unfortunately, the main annotated diagram of the board, which shows all the components and connectors, is incorrectly labelled, causing a bit of confusion. On the plus side, the BIOS options are generally well covered, and some of the more ambiguous options are clearly explained.

Overclocking options are limited, since the board only supports CPU core voltage options of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 volts above the CPU's default voltage. The small number of options will make it hard to squeeze out the last bit of performance. The board has a number of pre-defined turbo options, which allow quick and easy results, but this is not a suitable board for extreme overclocking.

At £84.60, the K8V is in direct competition with the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro and the MSI K8N Neo.

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