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ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe

ASUS has added the A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard to their already successful and highly-acclaimed A8N series. Is this board a worthy successor to the A8N line?

Introduction

ASUS is one of the largest tier one motherboard manufacturers on the planet. ASUS has always been synonymous with top quality, high performance mainboards. In addition, stability has always been the hallmark of ASUS boards. The A8N-SLI Deluxe and Premium motherboards were highly sought after and were nearly perfect. The A8N32-SLI uses NVIDIA's new nForce 4 SLI x16 chipset with full PCI-Express x16 lanes for each graphics card slot. Though the previous configuration of the nForce 4 SLI chipset wasn't exactly starving even the most powerful graphics cards, the new A8N32-SLI Deluxe promises some compelling new features beyond added PCI-Express lanes. Improved overclocking and improved layout are just two of the enhancements ASUS has packed onto the PCB of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe is ASUS’ latest update to their popular A8N series of motherboards. The A8N32-SLI Deluxe supports all current socket 939 processors including the Athlon 64, Athlon FX, Athlon X2, and Sempron processors. The board supports full speed dual x16 PCI-Express graphics slots and memory up to DDR 400MHz speeds officially. Following industry trends, the A8N32-SLI Deluxe requires only a few additional components for a full system. Components needed include a socket 939 CPU, DDR1 memory, a PCI Express x16 video card, drives, and 24-pin power supply. ASUS integrated the fallowing components into the A8N32-SLI's design: 2 IDE ATA-133 ports; 1 floppy port; 4 SATA2 ports on the NVRAID controller (RAID 0, 1, 0+1, RAID 5 and JBOD Spanning); 2 SATA2 ports (1 external and 1 internal) attached to the integrated Silicon Image 3132 controller;10 USB 2.0 capable ports (4 in rear panel, and 3 onboard headers supporting 2 ports each); 2 IEEE1394a FireWire ports (via motherboard headers); 1 NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet port on the rear panel; 1 Marvell 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit LAN controller; Realtek ALC850 8-Channel Codec with Universal Audio Jack Audio Sensing and Enumeration TechnologyCoaxial / Optical S/PDIF out ports on back I/O; and, of course, standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Mainboard Specification List:

Packaging

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe's box is typical ASUS; it is clean and basic, yet elegant. The box sports a black and dark grey monochromatic theme. The lettering of the board model number uses this theme as well, along with ASUS's new marketing slogan "Ai Life, Lifestyle to personal computing" written in grey, with the letters AI highlighted in red. The word "gaming" is also highlighted in red. This no doubt signifies whom this board was designed for: the PC enthusiast and the hardcore gamer. A quick rundown of the motherboard’s specs is written in the lower right hand corner. Below that is the board’s list of supported processors. There is also a "Corsair XMS-3500LL Ready" logo just to the left of the AMD processor logos. A flap on the front of the box reveals more details about the board’s long list of ASUS features. There are also more of these features listed on the back of the box cover. ASUS included the fallowing components in the box: User's manual, WinDVD Studio Software, a driver and utilities CD, three SATA cables, one ATA-133 cable, one floppy cable, one game port and USB rear panel combo bracket, one IEEE1394 rear panel bracket, one COM port bracket, a flexible SLI bridge, a motherboard cooling fan (used for passive and liquid cooling solutions to cool voltage components) and the standard ATX I/O shield. The ATX I/O shield has holes for the motherboard’s standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, SPDIF out, fiber-optic out port, 6 mini headphone jacks, 4 USB ports, standard 9 pin RS232 port, and two RJ-45 network ports.

Board Layout

The layout of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is good. You'll notice that the board is packed full of components. Because this chipset is a two-chip solution, certain concessions to the layout had to be made. Specifically, there is a lack of SATA ports compared to many of ASUS's other boards. This board only has five SATA ports instead of the usual eight ports we typically see on ASUS’ "Deluxe" line of motherboards. The next concession is the slot design. There is ample room between the first and second PCI-Express x16 slots. The second PCI-Express slot only has one regular PCI slot below it. This slot would be made useless if a video card with a dual slot cooling solution were installed there. While not the easiest thing to do, ASUS has managed to keep the layout very functional and left only one real shortcoming to the A8N32-SLI's design, which is the area around the CPU socket (more on this later).

Because there is so much speculation and controversy concerning the expansion slot layout on this board in many forums, including the HardOCP forums, I'll address these concerns. While the layout is weird, it actually works really well. You can install two video cards for SLI with dual slot cooling and still connect them in SLI with a sound card or other peripheral card installed. Granted, there isn't a lot of space left and cooling might be hindered somewhat with two stock 6800 Ultras. However, aftermarket coolers like the Zalman FS-V7 and The Artic Cooling NV5 Silencer Rev. 3 have different airflow properties and would work very well with this board. ASUS used capacitors from Rubycon (Japan) and United Chemi-Con (USA, Japan) marked KZG. The board revision we tested was v1.1.

Unfortunately, the CPU area is packed pretty tightly with components. That said, most heat sink and fan units should be fine. However, I installed a Zalman CNPS 7000B-AlCu LED heat sink and fan and I was unable to install the test memory for this system in the first DIMM slot. I was using the Corsair XMS Pro series memory, which is taller than most modules. Normal memory should fit fine, but anyone thinking of using a larger cooler such as the 120mm Fatal1ty FS-C77 cooler should think twice about using it with this board. ASUS has also included a proprietary fan that is supposed to be reserved for water cooling or passive cooling solutions. I know many will likely try to install it even if they are using air cooling. ASUS does not recommend doing so. Let me caution against this as you could have a negative impact in air cooling applications due to clearance and possible airflow issues. This fan, which is used to cool the voltage components, will prohibit the use of extremely large heat sinks if installed. The NVIDIA nForce™4 SLI X16 chipset is a two chip solution much like the NVIDIA nForce Professional chipset. Each chipset is passively cooled and has two standard pushpins that mount the stock heat pipe cooling solution. These can be used if more extreme chipset cooling is desired, or if the stock unit fails. Due to the location of the Northbridge, a large active or passive unit can be used; installing a large heat sink and fan on the Southbridge could possibly interfere with the installation of video cards, however. The 2x2 12V power connector is in the top right hand corner of the motherboard nestled between the heat sinks that cool the voltage components of ASUS' 8-Phase power solution. The CPU fan header is located just above the DIMM area on the right hand side of the board. While the board is packed and there can be some fitment issues with some components, hats off to ASUS for jamming nForce Professional 2200/2050 chipset features into a board that still use the normal ATX form factor. I don't think any of the clearance issues I've seen with it can't be overcome, but it is something that you should be aware of, and make component purchases accordingly.

The board's four DDR1 DIMM slots are located just below the CPU area, in a standard 2x2 configuration. They are color coded so that users can match the colors to enable dual channel memory mode operation. The color scheme is typical ASUS, blue/black/blue/black for DIMM A1/A2 DIMM B1/B2, respectively. The standard 24pin ATX power connector, and extra four pin MOLEX connector (for SLI operation) is just below the DIMM area. The board is configured not to allow the use of older 20 pin ATX power supplies. So at the very least, a 20-24 pin adapter must be used for proper operation.

The board’s Northbridge is located just to the left of the CPU socket area. It is adorned by the impressive looking gold colored heat pipe solution similar to the one used on this board’s predecessor, the A8N-SLI Premium. Just to the lower left hand side of the Northbridge is the Southbridge, which has all the extra PCI-Express lanes needed to get dual x16 PEG slots. Directly in front of the Southbridge, is the SATA 3G ports. To the left of the Southbridge, in front of the second PEG slot, is the CLRTC jumper for clearing CMOS.

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe has two PCI-Express x16 slots, which are not just mechanically in the x16 form factor, but each slot has full a x16 lanes worth of bandwidth. There is one PCI-Express x4 slot, which will also accept x1 cards. There is no SLI selector card with the A8N32-SLI Deluxe, which is a welcome change, and it was optional on previous boards, but having a full 32 lanes of PCI-Express bandwidth makes the selector card unnecessary.

The A8N32-SLI Deluxe includes the fallowing ports on the rear I/O panel: four USB ports, two RJ45 ports, six mini headphone connectors for the audio, one SATA 3G connector, Optical and SPDIF out connectors, a Parallel port, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.