Have you ever thought to yourself “gee, I wish I could stick a server processor into my gaming PC and see how it goes”. No? Well now you can. Introducing ASUS’s E3 Pro Gaming V5 motherboard. A gaming motherboard that lets you take an Intel Xeon processor and use it for your gaming machine. How does a Xeon processor compare? Well let’s find out.
How does one stick a server, aka a workstation processor into a desktop motherboard? Asus is using the Intel C232 chipset. This chipset not only supports Xeon E3-1200 v5 processors, but they also support the 6th Generation Intel Core processors, aka the Skylake line of processors.
There is some give and take in this situation though. Unlike the high end Z1xx Intel chipset, you won’t get vPro nor Rapid Storage, and you are limited to eight PCI-e 3.0 lanes. Also you won’t get the ECC (Error correcting code) RAM support that you would get on a workstation, but you would hardly miss that to be honest.
Why would anyone use a Xeon processor in the first place? Well some Xeon processors are comparable and or much cheaper than a similar spec Intel Core Skylake processors. You would be missing some functions such as unlocked multipliers, but in some cases the price is worth it, especially if you can find some cheap stocks online.
The Asus E3 Pro Gaming V5 comes in a normal two-tiered, no frills, cost efficient box. The first tier contains the motherboard itself, safely enclosed in an anti-static bag, while the bottom contains some extra stuff like the rear I/O plate, manuals, driver DVD and some SATA cables.
I have only one word for the motherboard itself. Awesome. While as usual Asus decided to stick with a black motherboard with red accents, it’s how they used the red accents to follow some wiring lines that makes the motherboard look futuristic and cool. I love how the lines seems to erupt from the CPU socket in the middle. Interestingly the MOSFET and Southbridge heatsink is contrasted, where they are red with black accents.
The motherboard is full sized ATX and sports a clean look. The area between the MOSFET and the CPU socket is quite large, enabling you to use a large third party cooler without much obstruction.
The Asus E3 Pro Gaming V5 supports the new DDR4 memory and accepts up to four banks of each, of which they can run in dual channel mode. It supports up to a speedy DDR4 2133MHz and also supports Intel’s Extreme Memory Profile or XMP in the BIOS.
Since this is a gaming motherboard, it comes with two PCIe 3.0 x16 graphic slots, although only the top supports the full x16 speed. This means that the Asus E3 Pro Gaming V5 only supports AMD’s crossfire in terms of multi GPU setup. You would also get two PCIe x1 slots for added peripherals, as well as two, old school PCI slots. Yes, the obsolete PCI slots still makes an appearance here for some reason.
In terms of storage, the Asus E3 Pro Gaming V5 gives you six high speed 6Gb/s SATA3 ports for you to play with. While for some 6Gb/s is fast enough, especially when you pair it up with a speedy SSD, some might not be content with that. So you also have a high speed 10Gb/s m.2 SSD gen 3 connector right underneath the southbridge.
To empower your gaming experience, Asus has also included the highly touted SupremeFX sound chip. Your sound chipset is shielded from electrical interferences and uses premium audio caps for excellent audio quality. The SupremeFX chip also has cool LED lights that will light up and pulse during normal as well as gaming sessions.
Something that might influence you more in getting this motherboard is that it’s equipped with USB 3.1. Yes folks, the latest,10Gbps high speed USB interface is included on this motherboard. Not only that, you will have both the A type and the C type, all situated at the rear I/O. Other I/O are separate and include mouse and keyboard PS/2 connectors, two USB 2.0, four USB 3.0, an Intel Gigabit LAN with LANGuard technology, and a 7.1 analogue audio ports.
Note that this motherboard does not have any graphic output. This is due to the fact that the Xeon processor does not come with an internal Intel HD GPU. So you need to rely on a discreet GPU for this motherboard.
We would have loved to test the Asus E3 Pro Gaming V5 with an Intel Xeon processor, but sadly we don’t have one lying around at the moment. So we had to make do with an Intel i7 6700k instead. And the motherboard performed admirably well, as expected of a gaming-centric motherboard.
Using PCMark, we benchmarked the motherboard, and managed to get some really good scores. Our only gripe is the lack of GPU output, due to the Xeon not having any internal Intel HD graphics. But if you are buying a Skylake CPU, you would likely have a discrete GPU anyway.
The Asus E3 Pro Gaming V5 is a good and robust gaming motherboard, albeit with a specific target market. If you are looking to buy a Xeon processor for your gaming needs, well, this is the only board for you right now.
A surprisingly good motherboard that shows even a Xeon can be a gaming processor.
Spec
CPU: Intel® Socket 1151 for Xeon® E3-1200 v5 and 6th genereation CoreTM, Pentium® and Celeron® Processors
CHIPSET: Intel C232
MEMORY: 4 x DIMM. Max 64GB DDR4 2133MHz Non ECC. Dual Channel. Supports XMP
MULTIGPU: AMD Crossfire
EXPANSION SLOTS: 1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 mode, ),1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode), 2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1, 2 x PCI
STORAGE: 6 X SATA 3.0, 1 x m.2 Socket 3.
USB: 1 x USB 3.1 Type A, 1 X USB 3.1 Type C, 6 X USB 3.0 (2 at board), 6 X USB 2.0 (4 at board)