ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n

Conclusion:

Between the four motherboards tested, the performance was virtually identical. In a number of the tests, the P5E3 Premium was a hair faster than the P5E3 Deluxe, but the difference was miniscule. All four of these motherboards had also worked under Linux without any problems. Between four motherboards it comes down to what features you are interested in using. Of the bunch, the Super Micro C2SBX+ is the one heavily oriented towards workstation users, the P5E3 Deluxe represents ASUS's competition from Q4'07~Q1'08, and then the Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 and ASUS P5E3 Premium are squared off as competitors from these two highly-competitive companies. However, the feature set is in ASUS's favor with the more advanced cooling solution, a third PCI Express x16 slot, embedded Linux through DeviceVM's SplashTop, and other ASUS innovations.

The P5E3 Premium is just a refresh to the P5E3 Deluxe, so there's no immediate reason to upgrade if you are a current Deluxe owner. However, if you're in the market for a new motherboard, the Premium variant has the advantage of DDR3-2000MHz support in an overclock mode, an additional PCI Express x16 slot (but limited to x4 lanes), ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit), and the newer X48 Chipset. With a price tag of $370 USD though, the P5E3 Premium costs $70 more than the earlier Deluxe model. This is one expensive motherboard, but does live up to the expectations for being an ASUS motherboard. If this has the features you are after, we have no problems recommending this product -- the layout of this motherboard is great, it ships with all of the accessories one would expect, overclocking was terrific, and it is another motherboard shipping with DeviceVM's embedded instant-on Linux environment.

Reviews and pricing on the ASUS P5E3 products and other motherboards can be found at TestFreaks.com.