Asus A8N Motherboard

[leachy86]

Hey chaps,

Today I recieve my new system all in bits 'n' bobs from OcUK by post.

This is a bit late, as I have already ordered and paid for the Asus A8N (not Deluxe or Premium), but I suppose I can still ask to see if there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

Since joining this forum, i've read numerous complaints about the excessively loud and prone to failure chipset fan, and issues with it not being a good overclocker (memory clock speed and voltage limitations).

What exactly is the score guys?

Is the fan really that bad? If so, what and how can I replace it with?
Is it a bad overclocker? If so, are any BIOS flashes available for improvement?
Are there any stability issues (I won't be using SLi)?

Just for the record, it will be housing an Athlon 64 4000+ San Diago with 1gb Corsair XMS TwinX at PC3200 (400mhz DDR) and loading the textures will be a Leadtek 7800 GTX 256mb at stock speeds. Cooling will be a Gigabyte 3D Cooler Pro (copper base, aluminium heat exertion). Storage will be a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 in 200gb and the whole lot will be in a ThermalTake Armor steel case with 5 case fans.

Thanks in advanced for helpful replies.

[Rohan]

The chipset fan is an annoyance, but most people have replaced it with a zalman passive heatsink. It's fairly simple to change, but you have to do it before you mount the motherboard in the case.


Overclocking isn't too bad on the board, as long as you're willing to use a divider and keep the memory frequency below 240Mhz. And seeing as Athlon 64's don't see a huge performance increase with overclocked memory, this isn't that much of an issue.
The issue with CPU voltage is that you won't get more than about 1.55v vcore. This is enough for most people on air, but for many it is not. Many BIOS updates have been released but none have fixed these two problems.


I've not had any stability issues at all with the A8N, and I'm currently running with HTT at 270Mhz. Overall it's not a bad motherboard. If you've already got one there's not much point replacing it. But if you're thinking about an nforce4 purchase, there are better options out there.

[blinky]

I had major stability issues with my A8N-SLI. Tried different RAM, different HD's, BIOSes, Windows and Nvidia IDE/SATA drivers. The biggest issue I had was HD corruption. Changed it for a DFI NF4-Ultra D and all the problems went away..

I'm certainly not a novice at building systems and overclocking.

[GizmoStu]

My A8N SLI has been fine so far. Yes, that fan is relatively noisy, but I personally don't have a massive problem with it.

[leachy86]

My system is all up and running now, and the noise is far from intrusive to a nice and peaceful gaming experience

[Rohan]

It'll be fine at first, but after a few weeks the fan can become very noisy and annoying, possibly even to the point of failure. If it doesn't break then that's fine, but just be wary of it.

[autopilot]

Why not the ultra version, it has a passive cooling system which seems to be quite good.