The dawn of a new era. P55 is here and all overclockers can rejoice...or can they? Lately a lot of forum posts have been painting P55 in that of a golden light. Making it look like god's gift to overclockers or the second coming of the overclocking savior. But - much like your girlfriends bathroom - nothing always smells like roses. Obviously my skewed perspective of what a computer should and shouldn't do influences my opinion. Considering my daily computer sits on the floor in-between two desks consisting of spare parts lying around that are all but dead...including a state of the art onboard GPU, I would have to say the majority of my concern is simply in sub-zero cooling and what a system does in benchmarks. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...

click for full size...

My priorities definitely aren't in my daily computing. This is why my focus with this setup will simply be benchmarks and sub-zero cooling. Despite my emphasis on these types of results, I want to keep things in perspectives by talking about what may not be so great about this platform instead of simply showing the good stuff and hiding the bad. I will be primarily concerned with the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD4P as that is the only P55 motherboard I have access to. I will also be using an i5 750 socket 1156 processor today as well.

Now you may be asking yourself why I would be using the mid-level Gigabyte board and entry level i5/i7 1156 processor to explore the sub-zero and overclocking aspect of this new platform instead of the high-end counterparts. Simply put, it is all I could get my grubby little hands on. Gigabyte has supplied the motherboard for my testing today and I will be using an ES (engineering sample) Intel i5 750 processor. Despite receiving the hardware in exchange for posting here today, I have not been given any sort of agenda or itinerary on what I can and cannot show from either manufacturer. I have free reign as far as what I can do with the setup and what I can discuss. So rest assured, there is no favoritism here, just an overclocker getting familiar with a new platform and sharing his thoughts, concerns, and results...good and bad.

Directory:

• Specs :: Just the facts m'am, just the facts
• Photos :: You know, pictures, images...like with a camera
• Test Bed :: All kinds of crap is getting tossed into this salad
• Go Time :: Single stage phase cooling... -35C and warmer (old tired Chilly1 unit)
• Round Two :: LN2 cooling... whatever the board/CPU will let me do
• Round Three :: Mini OC Report - OCZ Blade 3x2GB PC3-17000 8-9-8
• Conclusion :: Amazingly shallow thoughts...by me

Since this isn't a review, and it isn't an OC Report because I really am not methodically testing this board like I would in an OC Report, we'll just call this an "overclocker sells his soul for a company in exchange to play with their stuff" forum post...but with no responsibility to said company so results are in no way skewed . Before this gets too confusing, let's get started by taking a look at the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD4P specs and photos.