We saw the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium at Computex a couple of weeks ago and were intrigued- it was the first nForce4 chipset based motherboard we'd seen for the AMD platform that did not have an SLI switch. Something else that was unique to it was ASUS?use of heat-pipe technology for cooling. Our contact at ASUS also informed us that this board should overclock a lot better than their previous AMD SLI solution. Lets find out how well ASUS did

Packaging

The A8N-SLI Premium is part of ASUS?ai series which means that it has a pretty good packaging although not as good as their aiLife series that we've only seen for the Intel 845 and 855 chipsets. The front of the sleeve mentions SLi and some of the processors this board supports including a logo for the X2. Flipping the sleeve shows a picture of the board as well as all the ASUS specific features while the back lists some more specifications.

Inside the box, ASUS bundles a reasonable amount of goodies. On the cables side, you get eight SATA cables along with six SATA power plugs, two IDE and one floppy cable. ASUS also provides backplate for external SATA connections as well as four USB ports, one Firewire, one Serial and one midi port. Being an SLI board, the SLI bridge is also included in the package and a plate to hold the bridge steady in its place.

ASUS bundles a reasonable users manual that details the onboard options as well as the BIOS settings. A CD contains all the drivers and utilities for the board while another DVD features the WinDVD suite which has four applications- PhotoAlbum 10, WinDVD Creator 2, DVD Copy 2.5 and Disc Master 2.5

Layout

In our opinion, the A8N-SLI Premium has the best layout out of all nForce4 SLI boards that we've looked at. ASUS has almost gotten every detail right. We?ll start off with the heat-pipe that takes the heat from the Northbridge and brings it towards the MOSFETs where a heatsink close to the CPU fan dissipates the heat. This solution actually works well. The CPU area itself has a reasonable room around it and your HSF unit on the CPU should keep airflow moving.

Like ASUS?first AMD based SLI board, the A8N-SLI Premium also has the two PCI-E x16 slots quite a bit far apart which will help you install dual slot cards easily. ASUS is the only manufacturer that keeps these slots this far and we think its something others should practice as well as we've had problems installing dual slot cards in SLI mode. Another thing that's not to be found on the AN8-SLI Premium is the SLI connector between the PCI slots that lets you switch between Single and Dual card modes. ASUS makes the SLi selection process automatic and this is how it should be. The space where the switch lies is utilized to provide an additional PCI-E x4 slot giving you a total of two PCI-E x16 slots, one PCI-E x1, one PCI-E x4 slot and three 32-bit PCI slots.

Having a total of seven slots onboard occupies a lot of space and we were quite sure that we?ll face the problem of the memory socket handles running into the primary PCI-E x16 slot. Luckily, they don't go very far and you can install a graphics card with the handles opened although they will probably touch the back side of your graphics card. ASUS places the two IDE connectors, the floppy and the main power connector in this area as well while the 4-pin 12v connector is on the top- just where we like it. The SATA connectors and the onboard headers are located along the bottom edge however, the clearing CMOS jumper which is located next to a PCI slot might be hard to get to once you have the board inside the casing.