| Product: |
Asus A8N-SLI SE |
| Date: |
10.07.07 (121 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Excelent choice when moving from AGP to PCI - E.
Disadvantages: Not quite the rolls royce in this range from ASUS.
I've been an avid gamer for many years now and I can put my hand on my heart and say it's becoming an expensive pass-time.
So when the time came to move from My Athlon XP 3200+ gaming rig with AGP I took a small step in the right direction and went to an Athlon 64 system with AGP support until I could afford a PCI-E card. That way not taking the whole move in one big hit.
So fast forward and bit and I am ready to upgrade again, so off I go and start doing my homework. A friend of mine is even more of an enthusiast than me so you can't beat user experience, he was running an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe - no surprises there, and I must say I was impresses with the board.
So back home I look into the ASUS range as I am a fan of their kit and have bought quite a few boards by them.
What I was pleased to see was a value version of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe that was the A8N-SLI SE.
Now what was the difference between these 2 boards?
To put that into a nutshell and justify why this is a good budget choice. In many ways this board is similar to he top range board but they do strip out some items such as fan less heat pipe cooling, an second gigabit LAN card and they also skimp a bit on the on-board audio quality. The audio isn't a factor I consider as I always use my own add-in card.
True PCI-E SLI x16 Support is also removed, what that essentially means is that when you fit 2 Graphics Cards you cant run them both in the full x16 mode.
To me that didn't matter, as I was aiming to use only one Graphics Card, besides if I did choose to add another Graphics card and go SLI mode I wouldn't notice any problems as most cards only run in PCI-E 8x mode so as you can see it divides the 16 PCI-E channels between the two cards.
What you do get is:
AMD Socket 939 supporting Athlon 64FX, Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Chipset
Dual Channel Memory Support
PCI Express
SATA RAID with 3Gb/s support
Up to 10 USB 2.0 ports using on-board and external connectors
SPDIF audio output for home cinema
AI NOS (software over clocking)
Crash Free BIOS
Ok then enough talking about who what why and when let's get down to what's in the box.
Inside the box you will find your motherboard, back plate, SLI cable, sata cables, ide cables, floppy cable, sticker, manual and driver cd.
Everything was well packed and easy to get at.
With my case hollowed out and my screwdriver in hand I moved on to the building. The layout of this board makes it very easy to work with, plenty space around the CPU socket for large over clocking coolers, the DIMM sockets are located a good distance away from the CPU and are colored to help you know which to use to for Dual Channel Mode. I used an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and it fitted snug under my Zalman cooler.
The Nforce Chipset is cooled with a nicely designed fan and produces minimal noise and is located deceivingly close to the first PCI-E slot, I thought it would be an issue but once you get your card in there you will wonder why you were fussing in the first place.
With everything connected and plugged in I fire up my PC and enter the BIOS. The menu system is easy and intuitive to use and I had my SATA RAID and BIOS setting tweaked in no time. The board runs really well and was a huge jump up in performance as my old board ran on a Nforce 3 Ultra chipset, even the RAID performance is improved and I get much better throughput.
So about 10 Months on now my board is still running fine, I have upgraded to an AMD Athlon X2 4600+ dual core it took the chip without the need for any bios upgrade.
If like me you are looking to upgrade on a budget, you should seriously consider this board. However socket 939 is now a dead platform in favor of socket AM2, but if you have already invested in the 939 platform this is a good board to choose.
Hope my experiences help your decision.
Summary: Great motherboard for building a Gaming PC on a budget.
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