High-end motherboard

Top motherboard high-end

ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
If you’re looking for a motherboard with a little more pizzazz than what Gigabyte’s GA-K8N Pro-SLI provides, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than ASUS’ A8N32-SLI Deluxe. The motherboard is based on NVIDIA’s recently released nForce4 SLI X16 chipset.

If you recall the first generation of nForce4 SLI motherboards, when running in SLI mode only eight lanes are devoted to each PCI-E graphics slot. The X16 chipset solves this problem, providing all 16 lanes to both PCI-E slots, even when running in SLI mode. In theory, this eliminates one of the chief bottlenecks of first-gen SLI boards, but in practice there are no titles that take advantage of the additional lanes anyway.

The board boasts 8-phase power circuitry, allowing the board to run cooler while also supplying the CPU with cleaner, more consistent power. This feature has already made the board popular among the overclocking community. In theory, ASUS’ 8-phase power design should improve stability during extreme overclocking.

Another important feature found in the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is its heat pipe-based cooling. ASUS integrates a copper heat pipe connecting the board’s North and South Bridges as well as the board’s MOSFETs for improved cooling. This allows the board to run completely silent! Enthusiasts looking for a little more cooling need not worry though as ASUS also includes a small external fan which can be easily added to the board for even better cooling.

But that’s not all, the motherboard also comes with a wealth of goodies. You’ve got two GigE Ethernet controllers and support for up to four Serial ATA drives.

ASUS also leaves extra space between the x16 PCI-E graphics slots than other motherboard manufacturers, allowing the board to more easily accommodate dual-slot graphics cards like the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB. In fact, this is actually the motherboard NVIDIA recommended for 7800 GTX 512MB launch stories. Without this extra space, we wouldn’t have felt comfortable running two 7800 GTX 512MB cards in SLI mode – there just isn’t enough space between the x16 PCI-E slots on most other nForce4 SLI motherboards.

This added space does come with one very significant downside though, sitting between both x16 graphics slots are two PCI slots. This means that if you do chose to run the board in SLI, and also have multiple PCI devices, say for instance a TV tuner card and a sound card, you won’t have room to run everything adequately and still provide good cooling for the Master (primary) PCI-E graphics card in your SLI config. The third PCI slot is then located beneath the secondary graphics slot,

Alternatives

DFI’s LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert looks to be a solid alternative to the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. It has extra spacing between the x16 graphics slots, just like the ASUS board, but by placing the PCI slots beneath both graphics slots, the DFI board pulls it off without compromising as many PCI slots as the ASUS board does. This is a definite plus in our book.

The biggest downside to the DFI board though is the large fan DFI places on the chipset. Quite frankly, it interferes with larger graphics cards like the GeForce 7800 GTX, preventing them from seating completely down into the PCI-E graphics slot. After spending over $400+ on your shiny new 7800 GTX graphics card, it would be an awful shame to come home one day to find your graphics card is dead because it came loose while you were gone. DFI needs to fix this problem with another board revision ASAP.