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Ultra Connectivity |
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Ready to Connect |
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The Bundle
The Asus A7N8X-E
Deluxe ships in an above average sized box. The top
cover flips open to reveal the 802.11b wireless card inside
along with a picture that diagrams Asus' WiFi@Home features,
which is meant to make wireless networking, sharing, and
surfing extremely simple and convenient.
Opening up the
box reveals all the extras Asus bundled with the A7N8X-E
Deluxe. The "Deluxe" moniker is used appropriately
here, as Asus has included everything you need to take
advantage of the motherboard's features.
As the images
show, the bundle included with this motherboard is complete.
Two SATA cables along with a SATA power connector take
advantage of the motherboard's two SATA headers. Asus
also includes the EIDE and FDC ribbon cables for all those
of us still using EIDE drives and floppy drives. As
you can see, the Wireless Edition also includes the 802.11b
wireless card which is made to plug into Asus' proprietary
onboard WiFi slot. There are no shortage of manuals
either. Asus has included a Quick Install Guide along
with the more detailed Owner's Manual. Also included is the
WiFi@Home User Guide, which gives a quick guide to
understanding wireless connections, as well as how to set
one up using your new 802.11b wireless card. There are
two driver CD's, one for the wireless card and the other for
the motherboard. Asus includes two of its own
utilities on the motherboard CD. PCProbe is used for
monitoring the motherboard's vitals and Asus Update which is
used for updating the motherboard's BIOS. Finally,
InterVideo's WinDVD Suite is included for all those movie
buffs out there. That was a lot of ground to cover.
As you might expect we were very impressed with this bundle.
Under The
Scope: Layout and Features
The PCB used for
this motherboard is quite typical of Asus branded boards.
While this neither enhances nor thwarts performance in any
way it certainly isn't an eye opener and the quality is
obvious. In any event, the feature set on this board
is what really makes the difference when it comes to
performance. Let's have a look.
We didn't find
much fault with the layout of the board except for two areas
worth commenting on. The Northbridge chip and the CPU
socket sit rather close to each other. While this is
not a huge concern, those looking at aftermarket solutions
to cool the processor may want to double check the
heatsink's specifications before buying. We used a
Thermaltake Volcano 11+ during testing and that heatsink had
no problems fitting on the motherboard, although space was s
bit cramped. Another concern for the close proximity
of these chips, is that they could condense a fair amount of
heat in a small area, which could hinder any
overclocking, but that remains to be seen. The
placement of the ATX power connector is a bit of a concern
as well. The bulk of these wires will have to be run
by the CPU's heatsink and over the RAM. Rerouting the
wires is always possible, but depending on the case this
motherboard resides in, some may run into complications with
this.
Beside those two
little blips on the layout radar, the board is easy to work
with. The placement of the EIDE connectors and FDC
connector are preferable even for the larger cases, as they
are near the top of the motherboard. Expansion should
never be a concern as the A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard offers
five PCI slots and an 8X compatible AGP slot. Below
the last PCI slot at the bottom of the motherboard you will
see the WiFi slot for the Asus 802.11b wireless network
card. Also standard on nForce2 based boards, are the
three DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 3GB of RAM.
The back panel shows off the dual LAN capabilities we spoke
of earlier, as well as four USB 2.0 ports and the sound I/O
connectors.
Above you will
see the two LAN controllers providing the Asus A7N8X-E
Deluxe with the 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet LAN services.
The Realtek RTL8201BL controller offers the 10/100
capability while the Realtek RTL8801B serves up the Gigabit
juice. The NVIDIA Soundstorm on this board is provided
by the ever popular ALC650 CODEC, providing up to six
channels of sound along with the S/PDIF in/out interface.
Also pictured above are the two SATA RAID headers powered by
Silicon Image's SATALink Sil3112A controller bestowing RAID
0 and RAID 1 for all those interested. Also on the
board are two more USB 2.0 headers which can either be used
for the back panel USB 2.0 connectors provided in the bundle
or front USB ports on applicable cases. Additionally,
IEEE-1394 headers are provided and can be used via the
bracket in the bundle. One nice feature we'd like to
point out is the color coded system panel connector.
This is a much appreciated feature and one we'd like to see
more of around the HotHardware labs. Now that we've
given the physical aspects of the motherboard a look, let's
move on to the BIOS and see if it offers as robust of a
feature set as the motherboard.
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The BIOS |
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Asus style
goodness |
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The Asus A7N8X-E
Deluxe motherboard uses Phoenix's AWARD BIOS. The
first three screen shots are pretty standard BIOS screens we
can find in most BIOS menus these days that deal with the
basic options of the motherboard and its integrated
peripherals. The first screen shot in the second row
is where it starts to get interesting. The Advanced
Chipset Features page offers all the goods when it comes to
overclocking or manually setting the performance of the
motherboard. In here most settings can be altered
starting with the CPU multiple. For those of you with
an unlocked AMD processor, the multiple of the CPU can be
changed from a wide range of values. The CPU voltage
can also be adjusted up to 1.85V. While 1.85V is
usually enough to push a processor to its limits, those of
us into extreme cooling systems would like to see voltages
as high as 2.0V. However for the average user 1.85V
tends to be sufficient.
Continuing on
with voltages, the DDR voltage can be changed to one of
three values: 2.6V, 2.7V, or 2.8V. These voltages are
a bit disappointing for the extreme overclocker in us,
especially since this is a "Deluxe" edition board and
enthusiasts will be attracted to it. In any event
there is still some headroom there just not as much as we'd
like to see. The front side bus is adjustable in 1MHz
increments all the way up to 300MHz! That is
impressive so why would Asus make the voltages seem like an
afterthought on this board. At this point we can hope
for a newer BIOS revision possibly adding to our voltage
options. The memory frequency also has a wide
assortment of selections including "By SPD" and "Auto", but
more importantly we have a setting to keep the DDR
synchronous with the FSB. While we're on the subject
of memory, the timings can also be manually configured to
push the memory modules to their limits. The last
screen is the Hardware Monitor screen which keeps
temperatures and fan speeds. Also in here is Asus'
Q-Fan control which allows the system to adjust fan speeds
depending on factors such as system load to provide quiet,
but also efficient cooling to the system. Overall,
this AWARD BIOS implementation offers a nice variety of
changeable settings, but is a little lacking in voltage
selection range just a bit.
The Asus A7N8X-E
Deluxe is quite a motherboard on paper, but let's see how it
performs. Up next, our test system and the performance
metrics.
Setup and Benchmarking
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