Asus A8N SLI premium vs. deluxe. vs. vanilla

[morkus64]

I'm using an opteron 146 and 2gb corsair XMS... I'm not going for SLI right now, but I might down the line (I'm even using an ATI card right now untill someone will trade me - it's not playing nice nice with my NVTV, and I just prefer nvidia)

I've seen a few reviews comparing the deluxe and premium, but not with the plain jane version.

 

[morkus64]

nobody?

 

[corsa]

I would recommend the Premium.....very fast stable board, and dead silent chipset cooling, u dont want to have the hassles with noisey & failing fans. If I was building again Asus Premium SLI would b my reference just for the feature set alone over the 2 others u mention. If ur thinking to OC hard, go...DFI

 

[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.

 

[morkus64]

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.

thank you so much. that's exactly what i needed.

I've decided to go basic and get the heatpipe cooler


EDIT - can't find the heatsink on the asus estore... maybe i'll go zalman. Any suggestions?

Also, any idea if asus fixed the fan on newer boards? (since i'm ordering mine new)

 

[Old Hippie]

Here's the heat pipe. The fan issue has not been resolved on the current boards.

 

[morkus64]

Originally posted by: Old Hippie
Here's the heat pipe. The fan issue has not been resolved on the current boards.

oh thanks... it's a shame they haven't fixed it. What other coolers are people's favorites?

 

[johnpombrio]

I just got the basic and own a couple of deluxe. The basic also only has one 1GB lan port instead of two on the deluxe. Does have the new 2 x16 SLI tho. WATCH OUT FOR THE NVidia mobo drivers! Read my post about the board in this mobo forum... The new fans work fine and keep the chipset cool enough for me. Might want to wait until you actually have an issue before getting the heat pipe...

 

[KDKPSJ]

I'd recommend and buy Premium, one of the best NF4 mobos out there. (In fact, I used it for 6 months, and I can say it IS one of the best)

I'd never buy Deluxe, one of the worst NF4 mobos out there, fine stability, but noisy fan, some bugs and poor OC. (At least early revision is. It was absolutely the worst. Not sure if newer rev fixed the issues)

I'm not sure about vanilla, but if it's Premium-based, I'd recommend it. If it's Deluxe-based, I'd never recommend it.