There\'s no doubting that the ASUS P6X5 -E is a tremendous board. It has features to rival more expensive boards and rather than compromising on performance and overclockability, ASUS has removed others less useful features to reach its current price point. This entry level board represents the cheapest offering from ASUS to have SATA III 6Gbps and USB 3.0 compatibility. The board has many unique features that combine to give the best user experience such as true 16+2 phase power design and an excellent chipset cooling solution for the optimal temperatures and thus overclocking potential. It came as no surprise that the motherboard yielded some brilliant overclocking results, matching that of the Rampage III Extreme under normal air cooling conditions. It may not have been designed for extreme overclocking like the Rampage, but for a budget board, it generates more than enough overclocking headroom with an excellent upper BCLK limit of 221MHz.

As usual, ASUS also has some unique selling points that focus on ease of installation and use such as the various on board switches, Q-Slot and Q-Shield. The bundled software are also very useful, giving users intuitive applications to monitor and control how the motherboard operates. This level of flexibility is one of the key philosophies of ASUS and it\'s good to see that their implementation works very well. Again, it is the close attention to detail that has made ASUS successful in the past and the P6X5 -E is no exception. Designing the board such that the distance between the CPU and the RAM slots is minimized actually translated to a slight performance gain, pitting it close to the flagship Rampage III Extreme in many cases.

There isn\'t much in terms of negative with this motherboard. The bundle might be a bit lacklustre but all the necessities are there. There is also very little difference in its specifications compared to the more expensive P6X5 Premium. The most notable ones are the fewer bundle accessories, the missing chipset heat pipes and one less Gigabit LAN controller. Overall, it\'s a budget board that\'s punching way above its weight so don\'t be fooled by the price because the P6X5 -E has the makings of a vastly more expensive motherboard.


[+]Loaded with features
[+]Stable and high overclocking headroom
[+]Cool and efficient
[+]USB 3.0 and SATA III 6Gb/s
[+]Attractive finish and brilliant layout
[+]Excellent performance
[+]Price


[-]Power consumption

The ASUS P6X5 -E thoroughly deserves the Vortez Hardware Gold Award.