Abit's Fatal1ty line has become the “Mac Daddy?of motherboards- not only does it look awesome but it also provides tweaking and overclocking options like nothing else on the market. Today we take a look at the Fatal1ty A8N-SLI board from Abit based on the nVidia nForce4 SLI for the Athlon64 platform.

Packaging

We like it when manufacturers read their product reviews and work on reasonable suggestions. In our last review of a Fatal1ty board, we mentioned that the big size box would be a lot easier to carry if Abit had attached a handle and they do exactly that with the AN8-SLI. The rather large and black box now looks great and is easy to carry.

Flipping it open shows some cut outs that show actual parts of the motherboard which certainly adds to the look. Abit lists some of the boards features and specifications inside and on the back cover. The actual packaging inside the flip is still white in color- we would love for Abit to make this black as that will certainly add a lot to the look.

Like all Fatality boards, the inside packing is divided into three sections- one that holds the board, the second one holds the user manuals, the drivers CD and all the cables such as SATA, rounded IDE and floppy cables. The third section on the A8N-SLI holds the SLI dual graphics OTES cooling fan as well as the uGuru Panel- more on this later.

Layout

We love the red color and red lights that Abit uses for their Fatal1ty series- it just looks better than any other board out there. We also like Abit's use of black and red onboard slots and connectors and thus, we’re not sure why Abit used a bit of a blue for some connectors (like IDE and USB) when they could've been black or red. We normally wouldn't point something like this out but this is the Fatal1ty board we’re talking about and looks are important.

Abit does well with the placement of onboard sockets and slots. The CPU socket has some room around it and we had no problems installing our Thermaltake HSF unit. The main power connector is positioned next to the memory sockets while the 12V four pin connector is placed above the CPU socket- a reasonable place as it prevents any cable clutter.

For expansion, Abit puts two 32 bit PCI slots, two x16 PCI-E slots and two x1 PCI-E slots. An additional proprietary slot takes the included audio module. Abit does well to place the x16 PCI-E slots away from the memory sockets however the two x16 slots, like most motherboards, are close to each other. We like ASUS?implementation in this regard with a wider gap between the two x16 PCI-E slots and think that Abit should also adopt this for their Fatal1ty series.

Abit places the IDE connectors bent at ninety degrees towards the lower half of the board along with the SATA connectors. While these are placed ok, we’re not too crazy about the floppy connector at the bottom of the board. The clearing CMOS jumper and all the USB and firewire headers are conveniently located towards the bottom of the board as well and we certainly like Abit's use of tall jumpers.