Last year NVIDIA revamped their motherboard lineup with a newer version of the nForce 4 that offers two full PCI Express x16 lanes for SLI configurations. This new premium product has relegated the dual x8 boards to the sub-$100 market, but as some tests have shown, depending on the setup and the games, the full potential of dual x16 is not fully realized. This does not necessarily make the newer SLI chipset a poor solution at this time as there are several other benefits that are a byproduct of chipset revisions.

ASUS is a company well known to many enthusiasts and their previous AMD based SLI offerings have garnered high marks from many, including us here at Viper Lair. The ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe is their latest addition to their AMD motherboard product line. ASUS has done much more than slapping on a new chipset and calling it a day though as they have overhauled the motherboard design in several ways that will better benefit the intended market of the motherboard.

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe board we received is part of their AiLife Gaming Edition package. At this time, this is the only package from ASUS available, so don't look forward to any cheaper or less featured version of the board. As usual with ASUS, plenty of mandatory bits and pieces are included such as the motherboard manual, driver CD and rear IO shield.

The SLI bridge adapter is not a solid PCB board as before, but rather a flexible one much like the one found in their Intel 955X package. This particular connection is needed since the two PEG slots are slightly further apart than before. A WinDVD software suite is included as well for the "entertainment" side of things in the AiLife philosophy.

There's no shortage of connections as ASUS throws in SATA, PATA, and floppy cables. A couple rear brackets are also included for IEEE 1394, USB and game port needs.

We mentioned it here before, but those of you who use liquid coolers for their CPU have probably noticed that surrounding MOSFETs get quite toasty during use. This is due to the fact that by using a CPU block, you remove the "extra" airflow that a traditional air cooler provides. ASUS includes one cooling fan that can be snapped on to the MOSFET heatsink that not only cools that heatsink, but it also generates some airflow to the surrounding area. ASUS recommends not to use this if you're using an air cooler as this will disturb the airflow the CPU cooler is designed to provide.

The motherboard layout of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is very good as ASUS has done the most they could optimizing the PCB space for their components. It's a bit tight around the CPU socket, but we did not have any clearance issues with our asetek VapoChill Micro, Scythe Ninja and Zalman CPNS9500. We did not test with many water blocks, but the Koolance CPU-300 and Cooler Master R120 block also installed problem free. The only instance where we were unable to install the motherboard cooling fan was when we used the Cooler Master R120 inside a Lian Li V1000. Due to the radiator's location, we were unable to mount the cooling fan for the MOSFET as the radiator got in the way. In the socket image to the top left shows, the copper heatsink is connected to the two chipset heatsinks on the motherboard via a heatpipe.

The top left image gives a closer shot of the heatpipes in action. Basic heatpipe theory applies here as heat evaporates the liquid, moving it to the other end where it condenses and the cycle repeats. The included cooling fan will help matters greatly here to improve the performance.

There are four ram slots, colour coded for Dual Channel supporting a maximum of 4GB. We've had no issues with Mushkin, Kingston and Corsair modules and this particular board model was the certification board for Corsair's XMS-3500LL modules. While there isn't anything special per se with the ram slot's placement, ASUS does position the slots far enough away from PEG #1 that you should have no problems changing ram modules with the video card installed. None of our test coolers cause any problems with our ram, but we have heard of some instances where coolers that "flare" outwards towards the ram slots may have clearance issues with Corsair ProSeries modules.

In this same area are the floppy, ATX and EZ-Plug connections. The EZ-Plug connection is there for SLI setups and provides additional power for stability. In single card, even high powered ones, it's not necessary to install a Molex connection here. Granted, we used an Enermax SLI certified PSU here in a single card environment for our initial tests, so those of you with cheaper PSUs may want to think about using the EZ-Plug connection, or better still, replace the PSU.

After evaluating the "Premium" models from ASUS in the past, we've become somewhat spoiled with the double digit drive array possibilities with those boards. That being said, not once have I ever hooked up more than three so we're not terribly disappointed with the five SATA connections on this board. We did find it a bit odd that despite the RAID support of the SI controller on the board, it's pretty much out of the question seeing as to how ASUS split the connections with one connection as being internal, and one reserved for external.

There is also one PATA connection for IDE devices, most likely an optical drive for most of you. We can also see the third heatsink on the board in this area keeping the South Bridge cool.

Moving on to the peripheral slots, we can see the two x16 PEG slots sandwiching two PCI connections. There are three PCI slots total, but those of you with dual slot coolers on your video cards may potentially lose 2 PCI slots in a SLI setup. The one glaring flaw we see is the placement of the CMOS reset under the 2nd PEG clip. The ASUS Watchdog works pretty well, but if you're in a situation where you need to reset the jumper, and you have a dual video card setup, you will need to remove that card to get to the jumper.

The BIOS

As usual with ASUS, the AMIBIOS is the center of the A8N-SLI Premium's board level tweak options. Everything is neatly arranged and pretty self explanatory. We figure most of you don't need a refresher on the basic items, so we'll go right into the juicy bits.

Under the Advanced page, many of your configuration and tweak options can be found here. While it may not seem terribly useful for single PC home users, in a networked environment, the LAN cable check can be a very useful tool when trouble shooting network issues. It can spot a faulty cable and point out where the fault may be, but in the case where the cable is fine, the check tells the user to look at the switch, router or NIC.

The noise conscious will be interested in the AMD Cool N'Quiet feature. This Athlon 64-only technology effectively lowers the power consumption and thus enabling a quieter-running system. Not something overclockers will be terribly interested in, but those working on those silent PC projects will appreciate this.

As with all ASUS enthusiast boards, the A8N32-SLI offers a variety of CPU, chipset and memory tweak settings. While most of you will probably choose to do things manually, for those less experienced, you can let the board do it for you. "Auto" is just preset optimal , but safe settings and is the default out of the box. "Standard" is conservative, while AI N.O.S. is the ASUS AI Non-delay Overclocking System feature that will intelligently determine the system load and boost performance accordingly. The scale ranges are 1%, 3%, 5% and 10%.

There are additional settings for the SB and NB settings, as well as PCI Express tweaking. For all the Over-Voltage options, the defaults are allowed to be bumped up by +0.1v, except for the CPU which is increased by 200mV. DDR has more options to work with, going from 2.60V to 3.20V in 0.05V increments.

For the memory, there's no shortage of options here. By leaving the Memclock Mode on auto, the clock speed will vary depending on the FSB settings. Otherwise, setting it to Limit will allow you to inset specified values from as low as 100MHz to as high as 250MHz.

Last items of note are the options to enable and disable onboard peripherals and system monitoring.

Software

There are some Windows based applications included with the board, but of note is the AI Boost. The AI Boost is a Windows based overclocking, system monitoring tool and provided you have the board set to AI N.O.S., you can do some overclocking from a Windows interface.

NVIDIA nTune wasn't on our CD, but the software can be downloaded free from NVIDIA's site. InterVideo's DVD suite is included on a separate CD and allows you to create, backup non-copy protected disks, and playback DVDs. Norton Internet Security 2005 is also included as well as a Windows based BIOS and driver update utility.

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