There’s Nothing Perfect in This World

Although the PCB layout of this mainboard is overall good, we found some minor defects. For example, the placement of the PCI Express x1 slots isn’t very convenient: if two GeForce 6800 Ultra cards are installed, you unavoidably lose the access to one of these slots as well as to one PCI slot. You’ll only have two PCI slots left, and we wouldn’t recommend you to plug anything into the second PCI slot from top as this would surely block the airflow towards the cooling system of the lower graphics card. One free PCI slot ?is it enough? It may be enough considering the high level of integration of this mainboard, but if, for example, you wanted to use a SLI graphics array, a TV-tuner and a high-end standalone audio card, you’d hardly succeed. Moreover, each long expansion card automatically blocks the bottom latches of all memory slots. It’s much better with two GeForce 6600 GT: you’ll have both PCI Express x1 and two PCI slots available.

The position of the chipset can’t be called appropriate, either. It is put between PCI Express x16 slots and if you install two GeForce 6800 Ultra or GT cards equipped with non-standard cooling systems, it’s possible the bottom card will press against the chipset cooler. The chipset’s heatsink also hinders your using the PCI Express x16 slot latches, especially if a GeForce 6800 Ultra or some other lengthy device is there. By the way, we didn’t like the chipset’s cooler much, either. It is a small heatsink with few ribs and a tiny fan. It couldn’t but provoke our worst apprehensions. Our doubts about its efficiency proved true later as the heatsink became very hot during our tests.

We didn’t check the problem of connecting all the power cables because of a simple reason that we’re assembling our test platforms without a system case to simplify and accelerate the process of changing the graphics cards. But we think there should be no problems here since the power connectors of the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe are located exactly like on the MSI K8N Diamond which we had no problems with (for more details about the MSI mainboard you can check out our article called MSI K8N Diamond (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI) Mainboard Review).

This mainboard refused to work with graphics cards on GPUs from ATI Technologies at first, but this problem was solved in BIOS 1002 Final, so that’s not critical anymore. But unfortunately we received this version of the BIOS only after we had done all our tests and written this review, so we measured the performance of ATI’s RADEON X cards on another platform.

The new mainboard from ASUS is a very well-made product on the whole, if you put up with the minor flaws in the PCB layout, but that’s actually a common problem of many, if not all, highly integrated mainboards on the nForce4 SLI chipset since it’s really hard to put so many variegated components within the confines of a PCB of the standard form-factor. The problem is not even in an inconveniently positioned expansion or memory slot, chipset and so on, but rather in the catastrophic lack of expansion slots if there are two graphics cards in the system. On the other hand, the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe has almost all the controllers you might want, and the components layout is made such as to give you at least one free PCI Express x1 and one PCI slot even with two installed GeForce 6800 Ultra cards.

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Rich accessories
• Superb functionality
• Cute exterior
• Good expandability options
• High quality of manufacture
• Two network controllers
• Cooled CPU power circuitry
• Overclockable
• Exclusive technologies from ASUS

Cons:

• Minor PCB layout defects
• The number of the expansion slots may not be sufficient for some systems
• Low-efficiency cooling of the chipset