Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe: Board Layout
Recent top-line motherboards form Asus have been part of the Ai Life series, and the A8N32-SLI Deluxe continues that tradition.
Like the Intel version of the 32-SLI,
gaming is emphasized in all of the packaging and manuals. That makes perfect sense in this AMD version of the Dual x16 design.
Layout of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is close to, if not exactly, the layout of the Intel version reviewed last week. This should come as no surprise, since both versions are based on similar NVIDIA chipsets. The board is dominated by interacting heatpipes in a totally fanless and silent design.
The CPU socket area is dominated by MOSFET heatsinks along two sides of the CPU. These heatsinks are cooled by the CPU fan in an air-cooled system, but this board's design invites water cooling.
With a water cooling block on the CPU, there is often no fan, so Asus provides fans that can be attached to the heatsinks for cooling with a water block - or if you just want better cooing in a heavily overclocked system.
The layout is typically Asus, which means that it is generally very well done. We were particularly pleased to see the floppy and hard drive connectors on the upper-right edge of the board where they belong. The IDE connector that falls a bit south of mid-line is an edge connector, which should not interfere with other components in the area.
Power connections are split, but both the 24-pin and 12v are on board edges, so bulky power cables don't need to be snaked over the CPU.
This AMD version uses a 4-pin 12v connector compared to the 8-pin used on the Intel version. This should be your first clue that the current AMD design is not quite as demanding of power as the Intel version.
Another example of lower power demands of the AMD design is the EZplug connector to provide more power to the video cards. On the Intel design, the board will not operate properly without connecting EZPlug. On the AMD version, the manual says that the EZPlug is only needed if you are using 2 cards "without their own auxiliary power connectors". Otherwise, EZPlug is not needed for stability.
Click to enlarge.
Sata is all Sata 2 - 4 ports from the South bridge plus 2 Sata2 from the Silicon Image 3132. Everything on the board is similarly state of the art except for audio.
ATI recently raised the bar for AMD on-board sound by including hooks for High-Definition audio in their Rx480 chipset for AMD. With that in mind, AC '97 audio is now inadequate for most users - even if it supports 8 channels. There is the less-than-stellar sound quality of AC '97, combined with the higher-than-average CPU usage that robs performance from games. Unless your needs are pretty basic, we would suggest disabling the on-board audio and installing a real sound card. It is ironic that NVIDIA pioneered decent on-board sound with their nForce2 chipset, and they now have the worst audio solution available for AMD. We hope that NVIDIA will change that in the near future.
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Zebo - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
LOLLive - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
The Techreport writes about overclocking with AMD Cool'n'Quiet here:They highlight two important bios options:
and with regards to memory overclocking:
Does this board have these options in bios?
As Techreport writes:
I must say I agree.
Link: http://techreport.com/etc/2005q4/damagebox/index.x...">http://techreport.com/etc/2005q4/damagebox/index.x...
DieLate - Saturday, November 5, 2005 - link
Can we get some official info on these questions?They're high on my list of features. I was all set to go with the DFI until I saw this review. These features may win me over if the ASUS has them too.
Live - Monday, November 7, 2005 - link
It looks like official reply is not going to happen. does anyone know if the Asus A8N SLI;Delux;Premium has this in later bios? If so I would bet this one has it aswell.Capt Caveman - Monday, November 7, 2005 - link
The latest bios for the Asus A8N-Sli Premium came out yesterday and no, it does not have this feature so I doubt the A8N32-Sli Deluxe will have this feature. Not very many overclocker's use CNQ, so I don't think there's a huge demand for this feature unfortunately.WobbleWobble - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
I wonder if it's better than the DFI because of the PEG mode Asus implements on its motherboards, which overclocks the videocard.Wesley Fink - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
And I disabled "PEG link" mode for our review. Asus has settings in PEG for Auto, Normal, Fast, Faster, and Disabled. We set "Disabled" because we know this trick. Asus suggests using "Faster" for review tests. On the positive side you have that additional performance waiting to be tapped.We also turn off the overclocks that are enabled when many boards arrive for review. That's the first thing we check.
psychobriggsy - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Really nice to see such diligence!Capt Caveman - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Not by 17%lopri - Friday, November 4, 2005 - link
Also, if you're running SLI with 2 dual-slot video cards, where are you supposed to put a sound card, or any PCI card? It seems like the only slot available will be, if it's possible at all, the one above the 2nd video card. Not sure how anyone's gonna be able to use any PCI card with SLI.