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Great budget nForce 2 motherboard!! (7NJL3 review, not 7njl4)

» Pros

-Good NB heatsink
-Comes with a SB heatsink
-ATX Power Connecter is away from the CPU
-Capacitors and mosfets are well placed. Well most of them are...
-Stable with the hardware I had put in it: TNT2 PCI card, ATI 9600 Pro AIW, and 56k PCI Card. Booted

» Cons

-There is this one tiny capacitor near the CPU socket that will make it impossible to install a big heatsink if you want to do some serious overclocking.
-Overclocking isn't really emphasized in this motherboard.
-AGP slot is too near the RAM-DIMM slots. You have to put the RAM in first in order to put the AGP card in and take the AGP card out if you want to take out the RAM.
-Comes with basic features but no dual channel DDR (thats for 7NJL3 which is what this review is really about).

» Review

Overall. This is a motherboard that I would recommend to someone who doesn't want to do overclocking and just wants a motherboard he/she can just put in the PC case and forget about it. One problem though is that there is this small capacitor near the CPU socket that is higher than the CPU socket itself. This will prevent most people from installing a big heatsink for overclocking. My CPU heatsink not only touches the capacitor but when I installed it, I had to bend it a little in order for my heatsink to get on. Bolt-on heatsinkes like Thermalright SKUs are not recommended, maybe the SLK 900-A, which is a clip on, might fit. I plan on buying one to replace the heatsink I have there now.

Overclocking can be done on this motherboard. It does come with built in functions so that it wont let the CPU overheat, or any other component on the motherboard. I was able to overclock my Athlon 2500+XP by increasing the FSB. The Overclocking screen lets you choose between either "Optimal", "Aggressive", and "Expert" settings. Optimal gives you the settings that (via detecting)are the highest for the hardware you have installed (I.E. RAM and CPU). For example, I have the XP2500 and a stick of 512mb PC2700 RAM. Optimal makes it so that both RAM FSB and CPU FSB are in sync because both have a maximum FSB of 333mhz. Agressive is the same thing as Optimal, however, RAM timings are higher. With my hardware, this setting will not let me boot because my RAM isn't made for overclocking and can't do such high RAM timings. Expert Mode lets you configure everything. You can increment the FSB speed by 1mhz for both the CPU FSB and RAM FSB. This setting lets you tweak almost all the options on this BIOS screen. It doesn't give you onboard Temperature to see how hot your CPU is. However it does have overheat protection capabilities. For example, one time I didn't put on enough Thermal paste on my CPU. The mobo did not boot at all because somehoww it was able to tell that too much heat was building up and wasn't being transferred fast enough over to the CPU heatsink (this could've been a function built in the CPU however). Also, one time when I overclocked my CPU to a 3200XP spec and increased my RAM timings so that the FSB was also in-sync with the 200mhz CPU FSB. I was playing UT2k4 and I heard a beep then my mobo shut itself down completely. I then changed the settings back to normal. The reason I really couldn't overclock was because of my ValueRAM Kingston memory and my CPU heatsink, NOT because of the motherboard, as you can see, I am still using the same hardware. Once I do get a good heatsink and RAM meant for overclocking. I will edit this review and tell you how good this motherboard can withstand overclocking with the stock heatsink on the northbridge and heatsink on the southbridge. Also, northbridge heatsink you see in the picture on this website is not the one that comes with the 7NJL3 and probably the 7NJL4. Mine has this black anodized heatsink that is half the size as the ASUS A7n8X motheboard in terms of height. But I believe it has slightly more surface area than that one because there are more spikes on it, and it is a clip-on. The southbridge heatsink is also aluminum but its glued on. It does help in keeping it cool.

Overall. I'd recommend this to someone who wants a stable motherboard who is on a strict budget. This is a top quality motherboard. But beware the CPU heatsink size you want to install because of that small capacitor.