Originally posted by: stebog
I had the same questions a few months ago. I did a little bit of homework and came up with the following basic differences.
Prem - Electronic (switchless) SLI selection, silent northbridge heatpipe cooling, full set of aux SATA channels
Deluxe - aux SATA channels, card selector for SLI, tiny fan on northbridge
Basic - card selector for SLI, tiny fan on northbridge
If you search around the forums, some people are having fan failures on that tiny northbridge cooler. Some have elected to try a new updated version available from ASUS but the majority are switching to Zalman or Swiftech passive coolers. You can also purchase the premium boards heatpipe seperately for $15 from the ASUS E-Store as suggested by Dawza in the following thread.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...STARTPAGE=31&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear
Other than that little fan and few minor NForce problems, I love my 'basic' SLI board.