ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe - motherboard - ATX - nForce4 SLI

...complete system based around the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe. As far as motherboards go, I only really like to use 2 of the well-known brands which are Abit and Asus. According to our Abit contact we have at work, would not have an SLI motherboard out for "quite a few months" I had only the Asus range to choose from.

Now I was torn between a new PCI-E based platform or an older based AGP system - and I thought seeing as SLI was ...
...*First Impressions*

Asus have gone out on a limb here and given the whole packaging the "Premium" feel. Gone are the gawdy packaging that you used to get in the past, and in have come the sleek sexy black and silver styled packaging for a more "chic" and "futuristic" look. Once you've slid the top casing off to get inside this packaging, which I must say is like being at a kids party with the best wrapped ... more

oops, I did it again with such a SAD title that half the readers of this small review on the newest Nvidia chipset based motherboard for the AMD64 socket 939 platform, have probably closed their browsers in disbelief.

It was Just around the Christmas/New Year I decided that frankly my old XP3200+ based system could no longer cut the mustard so to speak, so off I went ( once I had been paid ) and bought nearly a complete system based around the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe. As far as motherboards go, I only really like to use 2 of the well-known brands which are Abit and Asus. According to our Abit contact we have at work, would not have an SLI motherboard out for "quite a few months" I had only the Asus range to choose from.

Now I was torn between a new PCI-E based platform or an older based AGP system - and I thought seeing as SLI was great back in the days of Voodoo 2 based cards I would get a PCI-E based system to be a little more "future-proof". PCI-E is designed as the new highspeed interconnect on a PC and is designed for an easy way to get data to and from devices at higher speeds than what are used at the moment. SLI is the new technology released by Nvidia where a motherboard have the ability to share the workload of the graphics between 2 cards - These 2 cards need to be the same make, model and even BIOS revision to ensure maximum stability.

*First Impressions*

Asus have gone out on a limb here and given the whole packaging the "Premium" feel. Gone are the gawdy packaging that you used to get in the past, and in have come the sleek sexy black and silver styled packaging for a more "chic" and "futuristic" look. Once you've slid the top casing off to get inside this packaging, which I must say is like being at a kids party with the best wrapped "pass the parcel" in the world, and opened the box - You are greeted by a whole manner of items, such as cables, manuals and even power adaptors that you would need to get this system up and running within no time.

Packed nicely into the packaging - Asus have not supplied a measly 1 to 3 Serial ATA data cables, ooooh no - They've gone and supplied a cable for EVERY Serial ATA port on this motherboard giving you the ability to have 8, yes EIGHT Serial ATA drives installed. Not only this but they also supply the following in the bundle of items that come with this board ;

SLI connector
1 x 1-port IEEE1394 module
1 x SLI retention bracket
8 x Serial ATA cables
4 x 2-port SATA power cable
1 x 2-port USB2.0 / Game module
1 x 2-port USB2.0 module
1 x COM Port module
1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
1 x IDE cable
1 x FDD cable
1 x I/O Shield
User's manual
Setting Sticker
WinDVD Suite

*layout and features*

Asus are on to a clear winner here with this motherboard folks. I'm sorry to have to say it, but its just the nicest thing to look at in the terms of motherboards at the present time. The black Matt finish just oozes sexiness all out of its ports, and with the gold finishing on the board - it just oozes sheer class and screams to the eyes " look at me, look at me I'm sooooo sexy"

In terms of layout - this is an engineering delight and should be praised from the roof tops. Both PCI-E x16 connections are laid out in such a way that you can install graphics that take up 2x PCI slots and still have enough room for ample airflow. This is where the Asus board scores highly indeed as some other motherboards have issues installing dual slot varients of PCI-E based graphics cards. Not only do you have the two 16x PCI-E slots but you also have two 1x PCI-E slots and 3 PCI slots. As yet, I've still to see a single PCI-E based card that uses 1x slots but eventually there will be a few interesting cards available nearer to christmas.

Most motherboards have just the 1 Gigabit ethernet port on them. Asus has included 2 on this motherboard. 1 is based upon the nvidia nforce4 gigabit network adaptor and comes supplied with a "hardware" based firewall, meaning that once the software interface is installed - Your system is secure from most the major threats out there that we face as internet users. The second which is based on the Marvel Yukon gigabit network adaptor comes with a Cable testing software package, designed to assist people find where or if there are any issues along the network cable (which there usually is once a months toll of doors closing on them is anything to go by)

Soundwise, Asus supply this motherboard with the realtek AC'97 based 8.1 surround sound as standard and also include the optical input/output connections for connecting the system to expensive optical based sound systems with great ease. Quality-wise, the onboard audio is very good in relation to its predecessors and coupled with a good 5.1 surround system it will happily play all DVD's as intended with great bass and superb clean sounds. Nvidia could have included the soundstorm technology but it seems they ditched that idea once the nforce2 ultra boards were released ( nforce2 was the first boards to have "soundstorm" - on the fly AC3 and dolby decoding/encoding and it gained a lot of fans due to this )

Not only does this motherboard have the nforce4 chipset which provides 4 Serial ATA ports which are the next generation and can support devices that use 300 Mb/s and the 2 standard IDE channels providing 4 slots here for drives, it also houses the Silicon image 3114R controller for yet another 4 Serial ATA drives to be fitted. In total - this board can accept 12 devices connected at any given one time, which is a LOT of ports to use up. As with all Nforce4 based boards - this has the ability to support upto 10 USB2.0 ports so even the most gadgetfreaked members reading this would have a hardtime filling all 10 ports at any 1 given time.

The Nvidia raid is very easy to setup and supports all the standard Raid Settings such as Raid 0 and raid 1 ( Striping and mirroring respectively) and it also has the ability to for raid-arrays across the 2 styles of connections (SATA and PATA) meaning you could raid a 200 Gb IDE with a 200Gb SATA without any issues arising. The silicon image controller also supports Raid 0,1 and now with a software update, Raid 5. Raid 5 is a fairly good way in having a backup feature because it can rebuilt itself if a drive dies unlike raid 0.

Back onto the topic about the hardware firewall. This is effectively a great idea as so many nasty pieces of software out there all try to contact various websites or connect to IRC and suchforth awaiting commands. What this hardware based firewall does is has a list of complex rules on which files can access the internet and what cannot. When you first load the program and load the system up, it questions about certain programs access rights, but within 2-4 days you'll have the system setup just how you want it and it will not question you again. Hardware firewalls such as this are a better idea than the software varients as the hardware load up as soon as the system is booted meaning that protection is always on unlike the software versions. Another added benefit is the fact that your CPU will not be doing all the firewall work and as such performance should be up about 3-7% on average.

Next to the PCI-E slot there is a 4 pin standard molex power connection that is used to "stabilise" the motherboards voltages to provide enough power to the PCI-E and the graphics cards if the power supply not really up to being used on this motherboard. Just under the 1st PCI-E slot designed for graphics is the "EZ-selector" card which tells the motherboard whether to use 1 or 2 graphics cards depending on your personal setup and preferences.

Peformance wise - This motherboard is a great all-round performer with stability improved in the lastest bios revisions (10.10 being the most recent and most stable) and Asus have included a whole manner of features that can be classed as either "gimmicks" or good features depending on how you look at them. First of all there is the BIOS logo which enables you to have a picture of anything you want appear upon boot while it does its self-testing. Next there is the asus vocal POST reporter which will tell you if there is a problem with anything on the system when powered up. Lastly there is the "instant music" where the pressing on a simple assigned key will allow the "soft" powering of the system to play CD-Audio without the computer actually booting and loading the operating system. All these features can be disabled as required, but they add the finishing touches to an unbeliveably great motherboard with no real bad features at all and performance thats great and reliable.

Asus are shortly releasing the newer version of this board which has an automatic SLI "controller", thus doing away with any manual switching on the EZ-connector and as such this will only go on to make this board even better than it already is. As with all new technology, I did have a few small issues but all these were fixed within the first week I had the motherboard when a total of 4 BIOS revisions we're released via the liveupdate system which updates the BIOS via windows automatically when launched.

Asus are known for their great boards and are constantly winning awards at various places such as computex and various other trade shows, and judging by the A8N-SLI Deluxe I have to agree and say its a hard act to follow. If you want great performance from an AMD 64 based system, with great upgradability and all round excellence, then you would be stark raving bonkers to not consider the Asus motherboard as a possible choice for a new motherboard.

 

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