ASUS A8N-SLI Premium - Page 19

After the big success of the A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, ASUS decided to release a new board version, the A8N-SLI Premium. Following on the capabilities and features of the Deluxe version, the A8N-SLI Premium proved to be further improved.

The main differences between these two related boards are the AI Cool-Pipe technology and the AI Selector ICs. Completely fanless, the Premium version uses the well known heat pipe technology to transfer heat away from the nForce4 chipset, cooling things down without creating any noise. However, with some PC cases, the motherboard is installed upside down. That is, with the PCI card backplane at the top and all the inerface connections at the bottom. This installation greatly reduces the effectiveness of the AI Cool-Pipe technology, but again, a small price to pay when you consider the reduced noise level.

With the AI Selector ICs, changing from SLI single mode to dual mode is easier than ever. No SLI selector card means you don't have to open the case to make changes inside the box. You can now change the SLI mode from within the BIOS or with the AI Selector software.

Judging from the performance charts, the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium is one of the best AMD-based motherboards available today. It even manages to outperform the A8N-SLI Deluxe. It is also is a decent overclocker, giving us almost 2700GHz with an AMD64 3500+ CPU (2200GHz standard frequency).

There is a bunch of features that ASUS offers with this board, completing the image of a very good motherboard. Unfortunately, there is no WiFi support. The ASUS A8N-SLI Premium is priced at around US$190.00.

Pros:

• Excellent features
• Noiseless operation
• Good Retail Package
• Very Good performance
• Monitor utility from within Windows
• SLI support with AI Selector
• Q-Fan2 and AI NOS features
• Great motherboard overclocking capabilities

Cons:

• No WiFi support
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• Cannot be mounted upside down as maybe the case with some cases
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• Temperature of the nForce4 chipset affects CPU temperature

Features
Performance
BIOS/Overclocking
Value for money