Motherboards - Socket 939

Dual-core CPUs and dual graphics cards are the ultimate high-performance tech toys, but before you can double your fun, you'll need to buy a new motherboard

Asus A8N-SLI SE

Manufacturer:	Price:
Asus	£80.29 inc VAT
Reviewer:	Review Date:
James Gorbold	Mar 2006

	OVERALL RATING

SCORE

5/6

Verdict: The definition of cheap and cheerful

The original A8N-SLI Deluxe has been tweaked and revised so many times that it now comes in more flavours than a multipack of Walker's crisps. In addition to the standard A8N-SLI Deluxe, there are non-Deluxe, Premium and X16 Deluxe versions, and Asus has now added yet another flavour - the SE.

Whatever SE stands for, be it Stingy Edition or Super Edition, the A8N-SLI SE is one of the cheapest nForce4 SLI-based motherboards in existence, costing less than £3 more than the MSI K8N SLI-FI. However, as the A8N-SLI SE is based on the high-end A8N-SLI Deluxe, it shares many of the same features, most notably the widely spaced high-speed PCI-E slots, which makes it easier to water cool or fit Arctic Cooling VGA Silencers to your graphics cards. This might not sound like a big deal, but trust us, once you've heard two Nvidia graphics cards screaming away together, you'll want a motherboard that has the room to comfortably accommodate oversized GPU HSFs.

In addition to the two high-speed PCI-E slots, there are two 1x PCI-E and three PCI slots. Where Asus has cut corners is in the provision of a mere four USB 2 ports. However, if your case is fitted with any USB 2 ports then you can hook up these to one of the six spare USB headers on the motherboard.

Sound is another area where corners have been cut, as the A8N-SLI SE only has basic 6-channel AC97 audio. The latter shouldn't put you off though - if you're a hardcore gamer then a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music should be on your shopping list anyway.

The BIOS of the A8N-SLI SE only allows you to increase the CPU voltage to 1.45V and the RAM to 2.9V, and provides no adjustment for the chipset voltage. Even so, our test CPU, an Athlon 64 X2 4200+, benchmarked stably with a 235MHz FSB, and by dropping the CPU multiplier, the A8N-SLI SE could complete the Custom PC benchmarks with a 380MHz FSB.

Clearly, the A8N-SLI SE isn't in the same overclocking league as the awesome DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert, but considering it costs £72 less and can manage a 235MHz FSB with our dual-core test chip, it's an attractive and cost-effective alternative for less demanding overclockers.

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