The best non-SLI motherboard?

wainwra · Post by **wainwra** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 8:32 am

I'm planning a complete new system, and am trying to decide on the motherboard.

Having done my homework (reading articles and forums here at spcr), I'm pretty sure now of my requirements:

- must support an AMD X2 chip, and use an NVidia chipset
- I'd like the latest and greatest features
- I'm not too bothered about graphics, as the machine will only rarely be used for gaming
- I've no particular plans for over- or under-clocking, but I'll be interested to explore that after I've built this machine (to find the performance/quietness point that best suits me)
- I value decent customer support for things like motherboards

My research suggests that the price of the motherboard is quite small (compared esp to CPUs, storage, memory and VGA cards) So I'd like to go for the "best" (ha) motherboard I can get.

I'm thinking of the ASUS A8N SLI Premium.

What irks me though, is that I really don't need SLI. The graphics card I'll be using (probably the Gigabyte GV-NX62TC256D8) will be non-SLI.

So I have two questions:

1 Are there ever going to be any more AMD, NVidia, non-SLI boards?
2 Is there some other good alternative I haven't explored properly?

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 9:05 am

I'd stick with ASUS, and if you want 939, non-SLI, and nVidia chipset, that would be the ASUS A8N-E. But, for that motherboard, you'd probably want to replace the northbridge cooler with a Zalman heatsink and make sure you have airflow over that area. It would still be cheaper than the Premium and should work fine.

If you're willing to sacrifice some of the nVidia chipset features, you could get an A8V-E Deluxe which is based on the Via chipset and is cheaper. Its also made by ASUS so its still a rock solid motherboard.

wainwra · Post by **wainwra** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 10:58 am

I just had a look at the pictures of the two motherboards in question, on ASUS' website. I see what you mean - the chipset cooling solution for the A8N-SLI Premium looks to be superior.

Plus, the feature set looks better on that board. I think that's my best ASUS bet then.

dasman · Post by **dasman** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 1:08 pm

Personally, I've fallen out of love with ASUS as I've had three different ASUS boards die on me in the last 2 mths.

Have you looked at the ABIT AN8 Ultra? It's northbridge is passively cooled with a heatpipe and you're not paying for the SLI you don't want. I've had good look with ABIT lately and I think this is the direction I'm going to go with my next system...

Dave