ASUS A8N-E - motherboard - ATX - nForce4 Ultra

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	EVERY ADVANTAGE, SPEED, RELIABILITY, PERFORMANCE .  A GREAT ALROUNDER .
Disadvantages:	I COULD FIND NONE

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

About two years ago or more, I purchased TWO of these ASUS A8N-E motherboards and built up two identical systems. One of these I had been using for up to 16 hours per day and that was over two years of many hours of long and hard usage.

I have nothing but praise for this model, the speed and reliability has been exemplary all this time. I run both of my PC's at 3% over-clock all the time but have tried 5% too, this I found made the PC unstable and sometimes it would reboot itself and sometimes not boot up at all but just go in an attempted boot-up in an endless cycle. So I took the Over-clocking NOS down to 3% where it has stayed and has been trouble free. I think it is required that there is good cooling and ventilation. Temperatures were usually near normal but on the odd occasion such as burning a DVD, the temperature of the CPU would rise. I did all I could to stave off this surplus heat, I had 5 fans in the case including the CPU with a good heat-sink and I went for the larger 120mm diameter case fans too. Getting the flow correct to ensure proper ventilation is very important (not much point one fan working against another!).

This week I had one of my units go down - kaput! The most used of my PC's using the ASUS A8N-E running for up to 16 hours per day over more than 2 years deserved a break! Well I cannot be certain that it was the motherboard that gave up but I feel there was an intrusion of some small metallic item, I will never know! I have a second unit of course, the one I am using now, I had changed all the pluggable components such as Graphics card, RAM, CPU, and everything possible but although the board stayed alive, (I know this because the LED was lit and the HDD's whirred on the press of the button) but no video. I can only draw my conclusions is that since the only thing I had not changed was my excellent A8N-E motherboard that it must be this that has gone u/s. All the plug-ins worked fine in the other PC!

ASUS: Please remake some more of these super MoBo's, there are none to be found nowadays, I have searched, there are a few s/h ones, but I want new. I searched for almost a week on the internet but can only find and STILL find the Sister motherboards, the ASUS A8N-SLI and the -VM models. Now why are these still around? They are gaming MoBo's in the main but as I cannot find a new replacement for my dead A8N-E, I will certainly get hold of one of these that are of the same brood. The ASUS A8N-SLI will do me nicely. I wish I could go to a shop and purchase a replacement though. At least I get to keep my 3700 Athlon 939 pin CPU !!!!! . All that I have from the old system can be used with the alternative.
ASUS A8N-E was the best and most reliable motherboard and one of the fastest! I would buy again.

Thank you for reading.

Hi-Spec-Tek.