Intel 845E Motherboard Roundup - August 2002

ASUS P4B533-E

As with most of ASUS's motherboards, the P4B533-E is a quality piece of work with a load of nice features.

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The first item of interest with the P4B533-E is the ATA133 Promise RAID (PDC20276) chip. In the past we have complained that the Promise 20276 chip is simply too limiting in what stripe sizes you can choose. You're limited to only 32K stripe sizes, which simply isn't adequate. Hopefully a different RAID chip will be chosen in the future.

The P4B533-E also comes with other nice features like Intel 10/100 LAN, C-Media 6-channel sound, and NEC FireWire (PD72874GC). We're glad that ASUS is implementing this type of quality technology onto their boards.

There's support for up to 6 USB 2.0 ports, and expansion room with 6 PCI slots and 3 DIMM slots and plenty of FireWire slots.

Another nifty feature of the P4B533-E is something ASUS calls "Q-Fan." Essentially, Q-Fan regulates your CPU's fan speed depending on how taxed your system is at that moment. The obvious benefits of this technology are lower operating temperatures. In fact, we did a few tests ourselves, and CPU temperature drops averaged between 1-3 degrees. While not a humongous drop, we can say that we were satisfied with the results.

Stressing the P4B533-E

The P4B533-E ran Prime95 torture tests for about 24 hours without a problem. Switching to Turbo mode and faster timings didn't affect stability one bit under Prime95 as well as all the other programs we ran (various games, DivX, etc.). We then went on to populate all 3 DIMM slots with Kingston DDR266 memory set at default speeds and timings and then eventually to more aggressive settings, but none of it was able to faze the P4B533-E. In addition, with all memory slots populated, we were able to run our entire benchmark suite a second time without a single problem.

Overclocking Options

Overclocking the P4B533-E is a breeze. You have the option of raising FSB in 1MHz increments all the way up to 200MHz. You can increase VDIMM as high as 2.9V and Vcore as high as 1.7V. In addition, there's the much appreciated AGP/PCI lock that will protect your AGP and/or PCI devices from failing, which, in turn, will increase your chances of a better overclock.

Right now, the P4B533-E is selling for about $155 in the U.S. depending on your location.