Verdict: Limited voltage controls and tightly spaced PCI-E slots

Foxconn has produced a number of good motherboards recently and is developing a reputation for producing quality products at very competitive prices. We first saw this motherboard six months ago when it earned a CPC award, but things move quickly in the world of motherboard design, so can the Foxconn NF4SK8AA-8EKRS still cut it?

One way to tell that this is an older motherboard is the close spacing of its two high-speed PCI-E slots. Most manufacturers now recognise the benefits of placing the high-speed PCI-E slots further apart, which makes it easier to water cool or fit third-party HSFs to your graphics cards.

This aside, the Foxconn has all the features you'd expect to find from a top-tier manufacturer: six RAID-capable S-ATA II ports (two courtesy of a Silicon Image controller), two RAID-capable EIDE channels and 8-channel on-board AC97 audio. There are also ten USB 2 ports and two FireWire ports. The two 8x PCI-E slots are separated by the single 1x PCI-E slot, alongside three PCI slots.

By default, the Foxconn runs our Corsair XMS4400C25 memory with a Command Rate to 2T, which hurts its performance badly in our tests. However, simply forcing the Command Rate to 1T in the BIOS sorts this out. More problematic is that you can only send an additional 0.144V to the CPU, which will limit overclocking, while the maximum RAM voltage is a mere 2.85V. The BIOS only allows you to increase the FSB to 300MHz, but usingClockGen, we found that the Foxconn is stable at up to a 410MHz FSB with the CPU multiplier reduced to 4x.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that you'll be able to replicate this with a fixed multiplier due to the very low overvolting options available in the BIOS. For example, we were only able to overclock our test CPU, an Athlon 64 X2 4200+, to a 235MHz FSB, while the best overclockers' motherboard in this test can manage 250MHz.

While this Foxconn motherboard is theoretically a good overclocker, its very limited voltage controls make it unsuitable for serious performance junkies. Add in the closely spaced PCI-E slots and higher than average price, and the Foxconn NF4SK8AA-8EKRS no longer cuts it.

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