ASUS A8N-SLI mobo?

[Beowulf]

I ordered this mobo from tiger, thinking of refusing deliver when it
arrives in a couple of days-- did I choose a bad mobo? Some of the reviews
of it repeatedly say it has problems with the chipset fan, etc. One reason
I went with it was because it is certified 100% for Mandriva Linux (which
I use). But should I choose another mobo and just deal with onboard LAN
or soundcard not recognized by linux and go with PCI soundcard and PCI LAN
card until linux distro/kernel recognizes onboard mobo LAN/audio?

What would be a good mobo without problems to get? I want to build a new
system that will utilize an AMD athlon 64 X2 dual core cpu, the newer
GeForce 7200(?) pci express video card (256 video RAM), 2-4GB system RAM.
Building a fast graphics system to do digital art (20x30 inch collages,
5-10 layers @300dpi), ability to do fast renderings, etc.

Any help appreciated, thank you!

 

[kony]

I ordered this mobo from tiger, thinking of refusing deliver when it
arrives in a couple of days

That's an odd buying strategy?
Usually keeping parts gets a system build faster.

-- did I choose a bad mobo? Some of the reviews
of it repeatedly say it has problems with the chipset fan, etc.

Just about any board with a chipset fan does, they all die
sooner rather than later (when looking at potential
lifespans of several years). Typical alternatives include
relubing the fan periodically or replacing it with a passive
heatsink IF there's enough airflow around it. Do you need
SLI support though? It does tend to eat up a bit of space
on a board.

One reason
I went with it was because it is certified 100% for Mandriva Linux (which
I use). But should I choose another mobo and just deal with onboard LAN
or soundcard not recognized by linux and go with PCI soundcard and PCI LAN
card until linux distro/kernel recognizes onboard mobo LAN/audio?

What's the use? If you need HQ audio, a separate sound card
is always a good idea. PCI Gigabit lan is lower performing,
but still far faster than 100Mb. If you only needed 100Mb,
PCI card is fine. Either way, the same drivers/recognition
you get from that board should be had with another
same-chipset nVidia board, since it would have same
components it should be equally supported with the reference
drivers.


Asus also has the "premium" version for those who don't want
a fan,
http://www.unitycorp.co.jp/images/im-products/im-s939/im_a8n-sli_pre/a8n_sli_premium-2d.jpg

 

[Bob Knowlden]

I don't know whether the A8N-SLI is more or less reliable than other nForce4
boards. It's a common board, though, so you may find a lot of problem
postings even if its failure rate isn't unusually high. I don't know what
the life expectancy is of the current chipset fan, but newer boards use a
slower fan which is supposed to last longer than the original 8000 RPM unit.

The A8N-SLI is also available as a "premium" version, which uses a heatpipe
cooler on the chipset. (It's not strictly passive: it uses air from the CPU
fan for cooling.) You can buy the heatpipe cooler separately:

http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=2535&catid=136

($15 US, + $5 shipping). That's not especially cheap, but I've seen higher
prices on third-party coolers that don't fit the A8N-SLI as well. (I use a
long 7800GTX graphics card, which would interfere with a tall chipset
cooler.)

The heat pipe fits a vanilla A8N-SLI, and I believe that it will also fit a
Deluxe. It's not difficult to install, but it must be done when the board is
not installed in a case. (You need access to the back of the mainboard to
remove the original chipset fan. If you are replacing the fan with a heat
pipe, you also need to remove a VR heatsink.)


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Hawk]

I ordered this mobo from tiger, thinking of refusing deliver when it
arrives in a couple of days-- did I choose a bad mobo? Some of the reviews
of it repeatedly say it has problems with the chipset fan, etc.

I have an A8N-E which is essentially the same board in non-sli form. I
have seen squawks in forums about a noisy chipset fan on my board as
well, which seem unfounded on recent revisions.

They may have had a crummy fan on the initial versions, but I think that
the problem went away a long time ago. I wouldn't trade my A8N-E for
any other non-sli nf4 mobo.


(*>

 

[Beowulf]

I have an A8N-E which is essentially the same board in non-sli form. I
have seen squawks in forums about a noisy chipset fan on my board as
well, which seem unfounded on recent revisions.

They may have had a crummy fan on the initial versions, but I think that
the problem went away a long time ago. I wouldn't trade my A8N-E for
any other non-sli nf4 mobo.

What is SLI ? I keep hearing about it regarding mobos.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

http://www.slizone.com/page/home.html

It's an nVidia technology (and marketing tool). It stands for "scalable link
interface". It's a way of using two (identical) graphics cards to drive a
single display. It is intended to double the power of the graphics
processor, which would be useful for gaming at high resolutions. Imagine, if
you like, a gamer buying two 512 MB 7800GTX cards at $750 (US) *each*...

Once, when 3dfx was still a going concern, it stood for Scan Line
Interleaving. With a pair of Voodoo 2 cards, each card would render half the
scan lines (in an even/odd interlace).

ATI's similar technology is called Crossfire.

http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/index.html


(snip)