Reviews for Asus A8N-SLI Premium Desktop Motherboard - nVIDIA nForce4 SLI Chipset - Socket PGA-939

Strange memory issues with Corsair XMS Twin

Strengths: Super solid once you get it updated. Right memory, oddity with Corsair XMS Twin but now flawless.

Weakness: Had issues with Corsair TwinX XMS Ram, found on forums that you can get the board in a state where it won't boot with this ram until you try a different type of ram, then XMS again (weird)

Other than the RAM issue (which I resolved) this board is terrific. Been running for 4 months and never a problem.
I can run every game COD2/FarCry/Tiger Woods 2006 maxed out
Had to update the OS to get Tiger Woods 2006 to run solid.

Windows XP SP2 (with updates)
AMD 3700 San Diego
2 Gig Corsair XMS Twin memory (4x512) manually set to
2-3-3-6 (400Mhz)
Western Digital 3.0 Sata II drive
Xeon 600w PS (SLI ready)
Gigabyte 7800 GT Video

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

A8N-Sli Premium

Strengths: SATA, RAID, SLi, very versatile

Weakness: A little on the pricey side.

I used this MoBo for my first build. Everything went together easily. Only problem I have is the board recognizes 1GB of RAM as 512MB. Then again I only have 1 DIMM of DDR. I have an AMD 64 X2 +3800 overclocked 8% and have not had any overheating problems. I would definetly recommend and buy again.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

A8N-SLi Premium Motherboard

Strengths: Easy, and clearly marked motherboard for this first time builder. The directions were excellent.

I really love how quiet and cool my machine runs. Overclocking is super easy with the Ai Booster program. There is alot of room for upgrading on this motherboard I know I will have it for years.

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

easy setup, stable, cool

Strengths: Very easy setup, my first build and absolutely no problems. Has every connection you could ever want. AI booster is really nice. Heat pipe is the way of the future for mobo's.

Weakness: Audio connectors for the front panel can be tough to get too

System:
AMD 3700
Corsair XMS 2x512 Dual Channel 2-3-3-6
XION 600w SLI power supply (very quiet and powerful)
HP 740i Lightscribe DVD/CD burner
Western Digital Sata II drive 120 gig
Gigabyte 7800GT (Call of Duty runs great with this card, max settings)

100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Smokin' MoBo

Strengths: Versatile, complete, fast, state of the art (for now!)!

Weakness: No on board wifi

I'm using this MoBo with a AMD X2 3800+ and two Asus EN6600GT/TD/128 nVidia 6600GT 128MB PCI-Express and it is smokin' hot and fast. The built in sound is what I'd expect from a built-in chip, maybe even a bit better. I'm updating a current computer I built a couple years ago and have quite a bit of building experience, and I had no problems with install, set up, or drivers.

96% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Excellent product

Strengths: so many features, minimal problems, heat pipe, has everything i need right now

Weakness: minor trouble with PS/2 ports, but resolved.

This motherboard has more than I need right now, but I wanted something that would last a long time with upgrading and such.

I am using it with an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and have had no problems with using the features of the mobo. I haven't even tried every little thing yet, but the stuff I have used has worked flawlessly.

I used to hate the board fans so I was glad to have the heat pipe. I still consider myself an inexperienced builder but I feel the BIOS was easy to go through and understand and configure.

I had minor trouble with getting the PS/2 ports to work after the first install of windows I did, so I reformatted and after I installed windows again everything worked fine (not sute what would have caused it).

I will update/edit this review as I use it more and if I encounter problems.

96% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Great Board - Has it all

Strengths: Has basically everything all bundled into the board. Instructions are very easy to follow and istallation is simple.

Weakness: If you aren't setting up a RAID then you will get a little lag time on the load screen

All around a great board. Paired it with 7800GT I get good benchmarking scores across the board. I've yet to buy another vid card to SLI due to the fact they're a little pricy at the moment but I'll be doing it soon enough.

92% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

nForce 4 - SLI boards are all very buggy

Strengths: Good looks, 1 more PCI port than most; game port

Weakness: Only 4 USB ports built-in directly on header; chipset cooler very hard to change to liquid cooling; BUGGY

Like all nForce4-SLI boards, this one is VERY VERY BUGGY. Before you take the plunge, be sure to check out the user forums at Asus's website, and see all of the trouble being experienced, even by advanced users. Many theorize that repeated lock-ups are due to ineffective chipset cooling, and indeed, the built-in fanless cooling design (which is physically connected to a MOSFETs heat radiator, and was instituted to address the complete failure of the fan used on the A8N-SLI and A8N-SLI Deluxe boards) gets EXTREMELY HOT (i.e., if you touch, you'll jerk your hand away by reflex). Removing the extant chipset cooler so as to install your own liquid cooler will leave you without a MOSFET cooler, and that means very very limited overclocking, unless you can fashion your own solution.
Asus does provide a lot of extra connecting cables and a fairly detailed manual, but my personal recommendation would be to steer away from this one. If you really want to go with a board that supports this all-important (and finicky) chipset, there are a number of better alternatives (look around; I settled on the DFI competitor after too much frustration with this one). The DFI, and perhaps one or two others, have the room and capability for you to install a liquid chipset cooler. In any event, don't expect the seemless experience you may have had with previous Asus MoBos; this one will let you down.

86% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

The ASUS A8N-SLI Premium

Strengths: Has basically everything all bundled into the board. Instructions are very easy to follow and istallation is simple.

Weakness: Pricey

This is the best motherboard that I have ever bought. It has many next generation features such as SLi technology and a Fanless Design heat sink for the chip set.Powerful solution also feature specification such as SATA 3Gb/s.

83% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

A Great Board for gaming, Sli, & Graphic Design

Strengths: Windows based; Sli switching & Bios Upgrades

Weakness: None that I can tell so far

I just upgraded my system from an AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz Socket A. I got this board after doing alot of research on it. I desided to go with this board for 2 major reasons 1) Windows based SLI Switching & 2) Windows based Bios upgrades. So far I haven't tried manual overclocking with it but the software that Asus packs with the board is great. I'm a gamer & I play Doom 3 on high, Far Cry on High, Halflife 2 on high. My Quake 4 is set to medium but this is do to my Graphics card ATI x600 which I will be upgrading very soon to an Asus 7800GTX & then eventually I'll be running 2 in sli config. I get great preformance at a 5% overclock through the Asus Ai Booster program using the Nos settings.

System Specs:

AMD 64 3500+ Vinice stock HS/Fan
Asus Sli-Premium
1GB of Corsair Valuselect 2x512
ATI A-I-W x600 PRO 256MB
XP Pro Spk2

82% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Premuim on options and quality

Strengths: Good board layout. Runs quiet and very cool. An very well written manual.

Weakness: Slightly flimsy back panel cover (the one that goes over all the rear ports). Rumored not work with all 4 DIMMS filled. Haven't overclocked it yet. Price.

This motherboard is everything all the online review sites hyped it up to be. In the box, you get everything you need to utilize the full potential of the motherbard. Features include a ton of USB/Firewire ports, the neat ability to hot swap SATA hard drives externally (even if they are internal hard drives), two ethernet ports, and the ability to use all three PCI slots even with a pair of video cards in SLI.

The manual has to be one of the best that's been included in any electronic hardware I've bought. This is the first computer I've built and the motherboard manual resolved almost any question I had about it.

Highly recommended.

75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

AWESOME BOARD!!

Strengths: AI Cool-Pipe, AI Selector, Tweakable, SLI, PCI-E16, Ready to support Athlon X2s

Weakness: 4 Dimm

This board is amazing! It runs with a heat pipe design that is fan less and is quiet. This board is tweakable to the extreme. I think this is one of the best board you can can for the price. It is Athlon x2 ready, so you don't need to update your BIOS. It is also Dual-Channel DDR 400 ready, so you can maximize your performance. Support up to 3gigs of ram and I can't wait to get 2 more gigs on it. It Supports dual gigabit Lan which is crazy! I've never seen it before. This board out beat any board in the market. I still haven't max out this baby yet, but i can only imagine.

73% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Best Motherboard of all time!!!

Strengths: Many accessories included with the motherboard. Support for Dual Core Processors. SLi Ready. 7.1 Digital Sound. Support for 8 SATA devices. Much more!!!

Weakness: None that I have seen so far except that it requires you to have a 24-pin power from the power supply and most power supplies have 20-pin connectors.

This is the best motherboard that I have ever bought. It has many next generation features such as SLi technology and a Fanless Design heat sink for the chip set. Overall I'd have to give this motherboard a 5 out of 5 stars.

71% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Great Motherboard

Strengths: Fast. Easy set-up. Easy to overclock if desired.

Weakness: Pricey.

This motherboard is one of the best I have used. Setup was very easy.

The dual-raid is nice. I have 2 74 GB WD raptors in Striping Raid (Program Drive) and 2 WD 250 GB 16 MB cache set as a redundent raid (data).

It has decent on-board sound, and every connector you should ever need.

The included software will automatically "tune-up" (overclock) your system through windows.

A little pricey, but worth it.

69% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Pain in the butt

Strengths: Throws together with no problem

Weakness: Drivers and built in sound.

Been around and around trying to get the audio drives to work. I've all but given up on getting any sound out of the built in audio divices.
Never had so many problems with an Asus board before.
Ready to throw this one out the window.

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Awesome Board!

Strengths: Fanless Motherboard - VERY QUIET! Massive USB, SATA Ports availibility. External SATA ports!

Weakness: ASUS should include 4 USB 2.0 interface instead of 2 USB 2.0.

This mobo comes rich with everything you need. The only thing I wish they did was to support more IDE drives (2 IDE drives supported) since I have like 6 of them. All I can say is get this board and you won't regret it.

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Asus A8N-SLI Premium Desktop Motherboard - nVIDIA...

Strengths: amd x2 duel core compatible, sata-II, 7 expansion slots in which are 2 pci-express x16 slots, and 10 usb 2.0 connectors, and 2000mhz bus for high bandwidth.

Weakness: dosen't have duel cpu sockets and ram memory is limited to 4gb which is great for now but will being to become inadequate several years from now.

this is another outstanding computer part i got for my
computer building project and i must say that with many expensive high end gaming desktops using the already
great asus a8n-sli deluxe, i just couldn't resist getting
this asus a8n-sli premium which is even better yet and
for only $10 more it's a great bargain for those who
simply want and/or need super high end computing such
as myself. i just wish there were motherboards that
can accommodate 2 of the athlon 64's just like some
motherboards being able to accommodate 2 opteron's.
anyways i do like the compatibilty for amd x2 duel core
as well as it's 7 expansion slots in which 2 of them
are pci-express x16, and the full compatibilty for
sata-II hdd's.

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Great with trouble in the beginning

Strengths: Lots of options, cables, fast!

Weakness: Minor compatibility issues

I bought three of these mobos for three seperate systems we were building. All three mobos would not boot with the Corsair memory we purchased. They were on the supported memory list at both Asus and Corsair but they would not boot. At first I was certain we had a bad mobo but after all three mobs failed to boot with the memory we booted up some value ram and it popped right up. We quickly ran a BIOS flash and threw the Corsair stuff back in. No problems!

Of course these issues are probably resolved by now but I wanted to mention it for future buyers. After this minor first issue, we have had no problems. All three machines are screaming along with no catch.

Great board even with the hefty pricetag. But I see the price has come down some so I think it's more than worth it.

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Poor drivers, software makes it lock up

Strengths: Packed with features (SATA RAID, firewire, USB2, onboard sound, dual-NIC, etc.) and great benchmarking performance

Weakness: Locks up almost daily

I have a dual-core 4800+ with 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800GTX, using the SATA RAID with two 200GB drivers, and am running Windows XP SP2. Ever since I first got it, the machine locks up roughly once a day, somewhat less if I'm not using it much. I've reinstalled the OS from scratch twice, and I've tried drivers from the ASUS site as well as going to the nVidia site and installing their Forceware drivers directly. I've updated the BIOS, swapped out the memory sticks one at a time, run memtest86 to verify that the memory is ok, and even bought a new nVidia GeForce 6800XT just to see if that fixed the problems, but no matter what I do, it still locks up roughly daily.

I've found many people on other sites reporting similar problems with the Asus A8N series who are blaming the drivers; I can't be sure but I've left it in Safe Mode for a day or two and it's never locked up, so that lends some credence to the idea.

Also don't install the "forceware" Network Access Manager / Firewall that comes with the the drivers installer, it doesn't play well with other applications like PGP encryption, I installed both and my network connection was completely dead until I figured that out. (PGP has no problem interoperating with other firewall tools like McAfee or Norton or even plain Windows Firewall.)

60% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Asus A8N-SLI Premium Desktop Motherboard - nVIDIA...

Strengths: Socket 939, a very stable board. External SATA connection is a very nice feature. The board has more features than most will ever use.

Weakness: You're paying for the name. I've never had any problems with Asus boards but, it's still just a Printed Circuit Board and they shouldn't be this expensive. All computer electronics seem a bit over-priced. Look for a generic board with same features.

Socket 939 boards seem to be selling better than the latest Socket AM2 boards, maybe it's because AMDs original Socket 939 (64 and X2) didn't need much improvement?

Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Asus A8N-SLI Premium

Testseek.com has collected 10 expert reviews for Asus A8N-SLI Premium and the average expert rating is 91 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

Read Full Review