ASUS P5N32-E vs P5N-T

[zellett]

Hi, I recently had to RMA my P5N32-E Motherboard to ASUS and they informed me that they were out of stock and offered to send me an "upgrade" at no cost. My question is, should I accept?

I've been reading about the P5N-T for the past couple hours and I'm slightly hesitant. It seems to be highly unstable for one reason or another. Are there BIOS fixes out by now that makes it more stable?

I know the P5N32-E was known for being a nightmare. Mine worked for about 2 months before it wouldn't even get into the BIOS setup. If I refuse the upgrade, they will try to repair it, or if they get one in stock they'll send that.

What do you think? If I could just get another P5N32-E I think I would, but since they aren't available anymore, I don't like the idea of them trying to fix a motherboard. Anyone used both or just the P5N-T?

Oh and I only have 2 days to respond, so any quick replies would be awesome.

 

[akhilles]

Get it. If it's a new chipset.

 

[dragonsprayer]

p5n32 is bad mobo as are many early 680i mobos that mobo is hybird chipset and its issues are worse then all other mobos made by asus

get the 780i stiker or 680 evga or intel chipset is far better for oc and relablity

 

[darrylsh]

I say go for it if you can specify the latest revision. I recently got the P5n-T and was a bit nervous too after reading many of the horror stories.

I didn't do much research initially, with my initial requirements being SLI and DDR2 because DDR3 was a bit expensive. Some friends recommended the ASUS brand. So adding up those requirements got me 2 boards, this and the striker II extreme (i think that's it) and it was about $100 more, so I went with the cheaper P5n-T deluxe.

After I placed the order I starting to look deeper into it and saw it had a lot of problems.

In the end however my board arrived, it was the newest revision and had the 1001 bios already installed.

It is working quite flawlessly now running Vista x64 with Q9300, and 4gig of Patriot SLI 8500 memory, 2 x 8800 GTS 512 Factory overclocked, OC GameExtreme 700W PS.

It runs Crysis flawlessly on high as well as Age of Conan.

I did have some problems trying to get my drives in a raid configuration, but I think that was my shortcoming and not the boards.

On an interesting side note, I had to ditch my UPS, apparently, my new rig draws too much power in SLI mode and causes my UPS to shut down after a few minutes playing Age of Conan.

 

[zellett]

That was pretty much exactly what happened to me when I got the p5n32e. I didn't figure out until after I got it that it was so unpredictable, when I was reading all the problems people have had with it.

Hopefully I too will get the new revision, but I'm not expecting to, as the tracking info says its coming from Indiana (where I sent my original board to get replaced). So I get the feeling they either fixed my old one or just sent me a refurbished p5nt.

It could also be that that is where one of their distribution centers is (as opposed to newegg and such that are on the west coast).

Anyway, it should be here in a day, so I've got my fingers crossed. I'll let you all know if I get the right one.

 

[dragonsprayer]

I say go for it if you can specify the latest revision. I recently got the P5n-T and was a bit nervous too after reading many of the horror stories.

I didn't do much research initially, with my initial requirements being SLI and DDR2 because DDR3 was a bit expensive. Some friends recommended the ASUS brand. So adding up those requirements got me 2 boards, this and the striker II extreme (i think that's it) and it was about $100 more, so I went with the cheaper P5n-T deluxe.

After I placed the order I starting to look deeper into it and saw it had a lot of problems.

In the end however my board arrived, it was the newest revision and had the 1001 bios already installed.

It is working quite flawlessly now running Vista x64 with Q9300, and 4gig of Patriot SLI 8500 memory, 2 x 8800 GTS 512 Factory overclocked, OC GameExtreme 700W PS.

It runs Crysis flawlessly on high as well as Age of Conan.

I did have some problems trying to get my drives in a raid configuration, but I think that was my shortcoming and not the boards.

On an interesting side note, I had to ditch my UPS, apparently, my new rig draws too much power in SLI mode and causes my UPS to shut down after a few minutes playing Age of Conan.

thank you so much for the follow up!

so few people follow up! what they do is come here for free advice and never leave what happened in the end - even though you are a stranger you should join and post more - good feedback and very helpfull to me.

As a hardcore asus man and pc builder i will buy this board and check it out after this thread - we can all learn from each other!

again thanks for the tips!

 

[zellett]

So I just got the board this afternoon. It was just the board, though, no manual or drivers cd or anything. They said they would send those seperately, but I just downloaded the drivers directly because I'm anxious to get it running.

I think I was right about it being a refurbished board (as it wasn't a retail package). But it appears to be working fine. It even had the most recent BIOS already installed (1001 i think).

I haven't had a chance to see how it compares to my old one in games and/or benchmarks, but I suspect the chipset won't make a lick of difference with my hardware (e4500, 8800gt).

Hopefully it will stay working.

On a side note, my last hardrive got corrupted, i think by the motherboard, so I had to get a replacement from WD. Now I can't activate windows. It says I have already activated it too many times. As this was my first build, I made a few mistakes the first time, so I had to reinstall. After that was when all my hardware troubles started. So I've only done it twice. Is that too much? Or is it the fact that I now have a different mobo? Any advice here would be well apreciated, as I can't use Windows update until it is activated. Is there a way to get another key by explaining what happened, without buying another copy of XP?

Thanks a lot.

 

[zellett]

Disregard that last bit, I guess the telephone activation method doesn't care.

 

[dragonsprayer]

Disregard that last bit, I guess the telephone activation method doesn't care.

windows activation bug is when your system will not prompt you to activate it and you go around in cirlces and must force activation by dos commands - this leads to reactivation prompts

best too wipe the drive and reload windows

the white box mobos are returns many times they just need a bios update some are repairs