ASUS A7N8X-X - motherboard - ATX - nForce2 400

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Ease of Installation	Good - quick to install
Stability	Very stable
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great value, All - in - one, A good base for a budget gaming system
Disadvantages:	No built - in graphics, Limited sound ports, No EAX Advanced HD

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

A year ago, the Asus A7N8X series consisted of some of the best selling motherboards on the market, and it's not hard to see why. At the time, the nVidia nForce 2 chipset was taking the PC market by storm and was making it easier than ever before to build your own computer. nForce 2 based motherboards included everything - well, almost everything. Sound, networking and even graphics could all be provided on one board without the need for extra PCI or AGP slot-in cards, thus saving slot space and (if you wanted to build your own computer) building time.

A year on and selling for under £50, this motherboard is now a brilliant value budget choice - you could make a very respectable gaming system based on this board. Sure, you won't be able to include a 64-bit processor or the very latest DDR2 RAM, but you'll still be able to create a machine capable of playing all of today's games in high detail. Even if you're not a gamer, this board may still appeal due to its all-in-one functionality - you can add a LAN connection if required and the built-in sound card is more than adequate for listening to music.

Technology / Features:

Like all nForce2 motherboards, this one comes packed with features. You get all this for just under £50:

- Socket 754 processor slot (Accepts all AMD Athlon XP processors including those with the new Barton core, but not 64-bit processors.)

- 400 MHz front side bus (Basically means you can use fast RAM with it (dual channel PC3200, but not DDR2.))

- AGP 3.0 expansion slot (Put a graphics card in here - a Radeon 9800 Pro is a good match for this board and the processors it can support. The AGP 3.0 slot is backwards compatible with AGP 2.0 cards, so if you're not a gamer, you might want to put an older Geforce 2 MX or something in to get basic graphical functionality. Unlike some Asus nForce2 motherboards, this one does NOT have built-in graphics - you must put a graphics card in yourself.)

5 PCI slots (used for expansion cards but you may not use any as so much is already on-board. If you choose to add two extra USB ports they take up one PCI slot).

- 6 channel surround sound (To get the full use out of the audio features of this board you need a 5.1 speaker set (5 speakers and a subwoofer). However, there's only a line in, line out and microphone port, so to use all of your speakers you have to sacrifice the line in and microphone inputs and configure them as outputs instead. Audio is provided by the Realtek ALC650 system which includes support for Creative's EAX technology (used in many games to simulate echoes, reverb etc.). However, there's no support for EAX Advanced HD (a newer version of EAX), but it's not a big issue. If you really want EAX Advanced HD, you can buy a sound card that supports it and put it in one of the PCI slots). I had a few problems with the sound in games at first, but by now the drivers are significantly improved and it's fine so make sure you install the latest drivers for the board if it doesn't already come with them).

6 USB 2.0 ports (Self explanatory really - you get four ports by default and can put another two in if you require (which you probably will with most peripheral devices using USB these days). In one of my PCs using this board I have two ports at the front of the case and four at the back, and in the other I have all six at the back. If you have a case that allows it, having ports at the front is useful for connecting game controllers, MP3 players etc. but if you're going to connect things permanently like a mouse, keyboard and printer you're best off having all the ports at the back out of the way). You have to buy the two extra ports separately but they're not very expensive).

10/100 Ethernet LAN (Again, self-explanatory. A system using this board will be fully network-ready, although the new 1000MBit Ethernet standard isn't supported).

Asus systems (This board features two special Asus trademarks - COP (CPU Overheating Protection) and QFan. The former automatically shuts down your whole system if it gets too hot, which makes this board a good choice if you want to try overclocking your processor. the latter reads the system temperature and adjusts the fan speed accordingly, so in theory the fan will be quiet when the system isn't doing much. In practice, I don't notice any difference in noise whatever the system load).

BIOS (Very detailed and allows you to change everything you'd expect to and more. However, there's no backup BIOS chip in case it gets messed up by a virus or user error, so you have to be careful when updating it).

Ergonomics / Aesthetics:

The board is well layed out and has a pretty standard design. There's lots of room near the processor slot so you can add pretty much any type of cooling you want. There's also a large manual and reference sheets included in the box, which makes setting up the board very easy as you are taken through every single step. The fact that so much is already included with the board means you'll only really have to add a graphics card, CD/DVD drive, processor and RAM anyway.

The board is also very reliable - I've never had a big problem with it to this day and I haven't even had need to update the BIOS - just the drivers.

List Of Ports (top to bottom in a tower case):

- 2 PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse (You might not need these as many keyboards and mice are USB these days. A good idea if you want to save on USB ports for other purposes though).

- 2 USB 2.0 ports

- Serial port (Again, probably useless unless you have old peripherals such as a digital camera with a serial interface)

- Parallel port (Used for old printers and scanners. Again, superceded by USB and probably not needed).

- 10/100 Ethernet port (Has two LEDs that light up when transferring data and can be used for diagnostics)

- 2 more USB 2.0 ports

- Audio ports (Line out, line in and microphone. Can all be used as outputs for a 5.1 speaker system if required).

Optional Ports:

These must be purchased from Asus separately and each takes up a PCI slot.

- 2 extra USB 2.0 ports (I recommend you use these as you'll soon run out of ports otherwise with everything today using USB).

- A gameport (Used to plug in older game controllers - superceded by USB and not really very useful).

Example System:

Asus A7N8X-X (Around £50)
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Around £85)
Fan (Around £20)
512 MB PC3200 DDR RAM (Around £50)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Around £140)
Combination CDRW / DVD drive (Around £40)
40 GB hard drive (Around £40)
17" flat screen CRT monitor (Around £75)
5.1 surround sound speakers (Around £50)
Keyboard and mouse (Around £25)
Case with PSU (Around £35)

Total cost: Around £610

If you're looking to upgrade your current system, you probably won't need a monitor, case, keyboard / mouse, hard drive or DVD/CD drive, which brings the cost down to about £395.

Conclusion:

This board is no longer cutting edge and it doesn't have as many features as some of the other nForce2 boards available (serial ATA, more sound ports etc.) but it is a great base for a budget gaming system these days. As you can see from the system example above, you can use this board to create a PC that will be adequate for at least a year or two without upgrades.

Chris Swan.