Final Words...

Throughout our performance tests, the board generally stayed towards the middle in our graphs. It gave strong competition to Asus?K8V-X and definitely lead the pack with MSI’s FSR and FIS2R throughout the tests with an exception of maybe one or two. The general usage and gaming performance numbers commonly showed the Asus K8V-SE Deluxe to be a worthy KT800 chipset contender.

As far as the layout is concerned, we must say this is perhaps one of the appealing boards we have seen in a while. We would’ve preferred the power connector to be in a more logical spot, but since it doesn’t pose a serious cabling issue, we can’t complain too much. Another thing to reiterate is the 90 degrees rotated floppy connector. It would’ve been great if Asus rotated all their IDE connectors, as it usually helps in larger cases, for some reason they opted against it. The third IDE connector, which is supported via a third-party Promise controller, is placed rather oddly as well. It’s rotated vertically, which doesn’t help the cabling issue any. In fact, it only hurts the standard location, if anything. Asus?Wi-Fi functionality on the board itself is little less than appealing. While we commend Asus on the innovation, the practicality just isn’t there.

The K8V-SE Deluxe is a fairly satisfying board when you look at it from features perspective. It has pretty much all the features onboard that you can imagine and expect to have on a high-end board. The BIOS is also feature-rich and should satisfy even the most extreme user. Of course, this statement would be contradicted when you actually start the overclocking tests. The reason obviously is the lack of AGP/PCI lock and the lackluster DRAM voltage options.

The Asus K8V-SE Deluxe retails around $79.99 at various online retailers, which makes this board one of the desirable offerings in the budget area. With features and performance of high-end boards (KT800 chipset), this is perhaps one of the best boards to get if you are in the market to build a rock solid system with the socket 754 platform. Unfortunately, overclockers will despise the board due to its aforementioned BIOS settings, but this board is still one of the better KT800 chipset boards in the market.

If you are looking for something that is feature-rich and performs well, Asus?K8V-SE Deluxe is probably one of the best solutions for socket 754 platform currently.

Looking for more motherboards, check out Newegg.com for more choices.