Biostar T5 XE P55 Core i5 Crossfire Value Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,128 words · ~5 min read
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So today we're going to be having a look at a board from biostar okay so biostar
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boards are they're never the the most
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premium motherboard on the market but what they do represent is an incredibly
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good value a stable overall board and
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really an incredibly good value because you'll get features on a bio star board
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within the same price point that you just wouldn't see from pretty much any
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other brand so this particular board is the a p-55 board it's their T5 X e
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motherboard it does support Crossfire just like most p-55 boards but the
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difference is that most of the other boards in this price point only have one
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PCIe slot so they obviously can't support Crossfire so let's have a quick
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look here at what the overall features are the bioex uh so it's got green power
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efficiency 100% extreme durable capacitors uh unique pwm design so it's
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called tweak Tech easy BIOS update by USB flash disc that's a huge one this is
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so convenient it makes it a huge difference overclocking Navigator engine
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rapid switch to shut down or restart the system you just have so I'm guessing
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that's onboard switches I guess we'll we'll find out you know what why don't
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we just open this thing up oh wait no this is pretty good okay BIOS relif
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resume crushed BIOS by USB flash dis that is terrific okay so let's get this
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opened up it supports core i7 as well as Core i5 and core I3 processors like all
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p55 boards so let's see what we've got for accessories first of all they've
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included two SA cables one Molex to SATA power adapter and then one IDE cable and
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they've included it with this Nifty little blue uh velcro biostar cable tie
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that's kind of nice so now you can go ahead and take that off your cables and
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then use that to uh help manage the cables inside your case that's terrific
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okay that's well thought out okay then we've got an IO sheet uh I/O plate so
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you can see that you've actually got to pop these out yourself which is I
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haven't seen that one in a little while okay so then you've got to use manual
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which is wow that's some pretty good languages we got there cameraman's
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iPhone's going off I think he's going to try and escape and go find out what it
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is wow this has like Arabic languages oh no I even got it right this is Arabic
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they have like everything in here polish that's awesome Portuguese Spanish
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French German oh and then like it's like 90% English Okay um that works for me
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let's have a look at the board itself so let's get this out right away here got
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one little piece of tape holding it on all right so the actual board itself you
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can see that even though the Box might not be the nicest they haven't skimped
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on the overall quality and look of the board so you've got large heat sinks in
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the places where they belong so on the voltage Regulators which looks like a
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four-phase setup okay and then they've also got a nice decent looking heat sink
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on the chipset itself I mean this is uh it's a p-55 chipset it doesn't use up a
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whole lot of power so you don't need to worry too much about that so let's start
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with the CPU socket like all p55 boards it's got an LGA 1156 socket so that has
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support for core i7 Core i5 and core I3 but you should note that for Core i5 and
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core I3 processors you won't have support for their onboard graphics with
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a p-55 board now like all p55 boards
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we've got support for dual Channel DDR3 four slots and then you've got your
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power connectors in their ideal locations with the 24 pin on the right
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hand Edge and the four pin up at the top left now this is something that I'm
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really happy to see on a value board because that's a lot of the time the
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little inconveniences that you start to run into on value boards is they won't
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have the power connectors in the right places or they they won't have things
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well fought out in terms of the ports now let's keep moving down the board
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here so we've got one IDE port here and then we've got a legacy floppy Port way
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down here all right so in terms of SATA 2 we have six SATA 2 and these are
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running off of the chipset now actually there you go I just said sometimes the
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port layouts are not ideal on a value board and that's what we're seeing here
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because if you actually install two dual
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slot graphics cards in this motherboard you will block the top three SATA ports
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unless you're using right angle connectors on them so then you've got
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your color-coded front panel connectors a power switch and a reset onboard
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switch I really like to see that again on a value board like this two front USB
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headers and then expansion slots why don't I just hold the camera so the
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cameraman can go in answer his phone just get that okay he just turned it off
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okay so then we've got a PCI Express 16x two PCI Express 1X another pcii Express
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16x like all p-55 boards these will run at 8X 8X and Crossfire then we have two
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PCI slots and let's just move around to the back and see what we've got for Io
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so it includes two PS2 ports one for the mouse and one for the keyboard six USB
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2.0 ports 1 GB Lan and 7.1 audio so no
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frills no gimmicks just a like many
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biostar well actually I should say almost all biostar t- series boards in
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the past have been great performers for the dollar they don't have the gimmicky
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features but what they do have is good value the features you really need to
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get the performance out of your system and I just thought now we'd take a quick
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look at this thing and on the back there's a back plate thanks for checking it out