Intel D845PEBT2 Blue Mountain 2 (845PE): Intel's Enthusiast Board

Final Words

After reading this review, there will undoubtedly be a few people that are put off by the lack of voltage tweaking, a BIOS hardware monitor, and overclocking options in general. After all, you can clearly see that the D845PEBT2 is aimed squarely at the high end of the market just by looking at onboard features like Serial ATA and FireWire.

But after thoroughly testing, benchmarking, and stressing the Intel D845PEBT2, we have come to several conclusions:

1. The D845PEBT2 is not the tweaker's motherboard. While it offers some BIOS memory adjustments, there are no voltage or FSB adjustments available at all, through the BIOS or through onboard jumpers.

2. The D845PEBT2 is not the motherboard for those looking for a plain vanilla solution. This is a very feature-filled product, at a substantially higher price than the no-frills motherboards currently on the market.

3. The D845PEBT2 is the perfect motherboard for those looking for a trouble-free, feature-rich solution at a decent price point.

The price point Intel claims the D845PEBT2 will hit is $140. Remember that you're getting onboard sound, LAN, FireWire, USB 2.0, and Serial ATA for this price, which is a tremendous bargain for an Intel-made motherboard.

While not the "true" enthusiast motherboard that some thought the D845PEBT2 would be, there's no denying that this is a fine product that will undoubtedly fill a certain niche in the enthusiast crowd. By far the biggest attraction to the D845PEBT2 is the quality and reliability that goes hand in hand with the Intel logo on the PCB. However, outside of a full integrated feature set, there's still a lot that separates this board from the likes of an ABIT, ASUS or MSI enthusiast solution.

Stay tuned for more coverage of Intel's 845PE chipset. Also watch for more coverage of SiS's 648 chipset and NVIDIA's nForce2 solution.