Asus A8N32-SLI MB review on Anandtech - ultimate quality at a price

  • Thread starter Thread starter Derek
  • Start date Start date
D

Derek

John said:
^^^^^^

Electrically quieter, I mean of course...........

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
Click to expand...
In that review it shows how more phases can smooth an AC supply, which
is all very understandable - but isn't the regulator taking 12V DC from
the PSU and reducing it to 1.xx V DC for the cpu. Other than some
ripple on the 12V line, what smoothing is needed? What am I missing?

Derek
 
The review of the latest iteration in premium AMD SLI motherboards.
Dual true X16 channels plus a whole bunch of other really nifty
features. All comes at a price, of course..........

Plus the review debunks a lot of the hype-rumors swirling around
this board.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589

The review of the Intel version of this motherboard (P5N32-SLI) is
here:-

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2580

Equally stellar..........

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
 
John Lewis said:
The review of the latest iteration in premium AMD SLI motherboards.
Dual true X16 channels plus a whole bunch of other really nifty
features. All comes at a price, of course..........

Plus the review debunks a lot of the hype-rumors swirling around
this board.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589

The review of the Intel version of this motherboard (P5N32-SLI) is
here:-

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2580

Equally stellar..........

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
Click to expand...

A 17% gain over the current motherboards with just a single video is
interesting. But the SLI daul 16x benchmarks over dual 8x motherboards is
nothing to write home about.
 
A 17% gain over the current motherboards with just a single video is
interesting. But the SLI daul 16x benchmarks over dual 8x motherboards is
nothing to write home about.
Click to expand...

The overclock capability is highly noteworthy -- besides all these
other nifty features. Plus, isn't it nice that the voltage regulators
runs cooler, quieter and more efficiently.............. And no MB fans
to fail.

One huge caveat.... neither the A8N32-SLI, the P5N32-SLI nor or the
A8N-SLI Premium should ever be installed in one of the now fashionable
upside-down-MB-installation tower cases ( example: Most of the
insanely-expensive Lian-li COOL/SILENT series) The heat-pipe
heatsinks must always be positioned be above the chip-set for the
heat-pipes to work at maximim efficiency.

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
 
The overclock capability is highly noteworthy -- besides all these
other nifty features. Plus, isn't it nice that the voltage regulators
runs cooler, quieter and more efficiently..............
Click to expand...
^^^^^^

Electrically quieter, I mean of course...........

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
 
John Lewis said:
^^^^^^

Electrically quieter, I mean of course...........

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
Click to expand...

Quieter is always good. Just means that I can hear the crickets better at
night.
 
One huge caveat.... neither the A8N32-SLI, the P5N32-SLI nor or the
A8N-SLI Premium should ever be installed in one of the now fashionable
upside-down-MB-installation tower cases ( example: Most of the
insanely-expensive Lian-li COOL/SILENT series) The heat-pipe
heatsinks must always be positioned be above the chip-set for the
heat-pipes to work at maximim efficiency.

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of ordering a Lian Li PC-60Plus case. Does anyone know
if this is such an "upside-down-MB-installation tower case" that John
Lewis warns against pairing with an Asus heatpipe-equipped motherboard
like the A8N-SLI Premium or A8N32-SLI?

Philly
 
I was thinking of ordering a Lian Li PC-60Plus case. Does anyone know
if this is such an "upside-down-MB-installation tower case" that John
Lewis warns against pairing with an Asus heatpipe-equipped motherboard
like the A8N-SLI Premium or A8N32-SLI?
Click to expand...

The PC-60 Plus is OK.

See:-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112078

and look at the pictures.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is an example of a ( very expensive ) case that will NOT be
satisfactory for the heat-pipe Asus boards, or any other boards with
similar passive heat-pipe design.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112052

Note the vertical inversion of the motherbord mountings, with the
plug-in peripherals at the top of the back-panel.

BTW, you can spend a very informative hour or two browsing the
computer-case pictures on Newegg. However, nothing like browsing
the real things at your local computer-parts stores and pi**ing off
the sales dweebs by partly disassembling a few of them. Assembly
subtleties don't show up too well in the pictures.

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
 
A few more points about this board and its Intel brother P5N32-SLI.
The layout configuration is for extreme-gamers/extreme-overclockers
and not ideal at all for those who want to add several peripheral PCI
cards while running a dual-SLI configuration....see 'Downsides' below.
The box has " Motherboard Gaming" right there in large letters.

The dual X16 chip-set takes up a lot of space, and the heat-pipe
assembly is bulky. Plus the 8-phase power distribution takes up more
space around the CPU, but in doing so moves the CPU towards the
peripheral slots such that the largest-board-area CPU heat-sinks are
likely to fit without colliding with an adjacent power-supply. Also,
the component heights in a large area around the CPU are quite low, so
I suspect (for example) that a Zalman CNPS7700 series heat-sink will
have no clearance trouble either with the power-supply or motherboard
- needs checking of course -- and if OK, it could nicely circulate
air through all the vital heat-pipe and regulator heat-sinks as well.

Downsides:----

For those wanting dual-SLI, running dual high-end cards such as
dual-7800GTX and wanting excellent ventilation of both cards,
only one of the 3 PCI slots (the middle one) is really open without
serious interference with the air-flow to one or other of the GPU fans
on a single-slot video card. And for a dual-slot-width video card, the
adjacent PCI slot is automatically lost anyway.

Asus failed to put a low-CPU-usage audio solution on the board,
( the usual Realtek ALC850... yuk quality too..) which means that this
one genuinely-spare PCI slot really needs to be dedicated to a decent
audio board.

The remaining PCIeX1_X4 slot will only accommodate a very short
(4-inch) board, otherwise it collides with the heat-pipe/ chip-set
assembly. There is a yet-unreleased version of the A8N32-SLI that has
a Wi-Fi adapter in this slot.

I fully expect that Asus willl eventually make a Premium version
of the A8N32-SLI with decent on-board audio highly-compatible with
current games, such as Audigy2. I believe that one of the other tier1
MB vendors ( MSI ?) may also release a SLI X16 board in the near
future with Audigy2 on board.

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
 
Derek said:
In that review it shows how more phases can smooth an AC supply, which
is all very understandable - but isn't the regulator taking 12V DC from
the PSU and reducing it to 1.xx V DC for the cpu. Other than some
ripple on the 12V line, what smoothing is needed? What am I missing?
Click to expand...

Having more regulator phases reduces the noise created by the switching
regulators themselves.
 
The PC-60 Plus is OK.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on the Lian Li PC-60 Plus case being OK to go with
the new heatpipe-equipped motherboards. I actually like the black one
you gave a link to better than the silver one I was looking at. :)

The other Lian Li you link to is, as you say, very expensive, and I
don't have to feel bad now for not being able to afford it since it
would not go well with this Asus motherboard.

The Asus A8N32-SLI looks pretty good, IMHO . I plan on comparing it
to three other mobos coming out this November - two from Abit and the
new DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR "Expert"
http://www.ocheaven.com/readvarticle_en.asp?id=1151
http://www.ocheaven.com/readvarticle_en.asp?id=1160

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Press/press_h...&TITLE_ID=6330&LINKED_URL=arch390.jsp&SITE=US
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pr...p?PRODUCT_ID=3872&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP UT&SITE=US

Unfortunately, all of these mobos will probably be pretty expensive,
and the Asus A8N32-SLI might be the priciest (if it's selling for
$247). http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589

Thanks again!

Philly
 
Having more regulator phases reduces the noise created by the switching
regulators themselves.
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed.

Easier on the regulators... less than half the dissipation in each
regulator compared with the usual 4 phase.

Also easier on the capacitors in each regulator leg, half the
ripple-current ( less self-heating in the resistive component of the
capacitor impedance).

8-phase is a great idea. Does require twice the number of components,
takes up a bigger board area, but the components are not very
expensive and the net benefit in terms of voltage smoothing and
reliability is distinctly positive. Remember that the total current in
a high-performance CPU can peak at 100 amps.

John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
 
Back
Top