Asus A8N-SLI noise

[ronnie]

I'm buying a totally new rig, and my choice this far is asus A8N-SLI mobo, but recently I bumbed into a thread on Finnish forum where guys complain about the noise this mobo's little fan makes, and they say it's really loud. Can anyone tell me is that noise really that bad..? I'm not going to buy any kind of sound suppressed case.

Another thing about this mobo: Is it a wise decision to buy this if I don't plan on using two graphics cards..? (atleast anytime soon) <A HREF="http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gbnf44x&page=1" target="_new">http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gbnf44x&page=1</A> ...in that test the Gigabyte mobo beats the A8N-SLI quite easily, is SLI mobo really slower or is that an issue about poor bios version or something?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by ronnie on 01/30/05 12:59 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Rugger]

If you have money to burn, then it might be worth it. . Considering you can get an excellent non-SLI s939 mobo for about $100 less than an SLI board, you might be better served by putting that money towards other components, specifically a better graphics card if you're buying one of them, too.
Some questions for you:
1. What's your current rig?
2. What all are you going to upgrade?
3. WHY upgrade and what do you use the PC for?

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[ronnie]

Hi!

1. Old old old... I bought this 4,5 years ago
2. ...in other words, I'm going to upgrade the whole thing
3. I need a more powerful computer for everyday use, it takes minutes just to get acrobat reader started, just an example. On the other hand I like playing games too.

Here are the main things I'm pretty sure I'm buying:
AMD 3500+ (winchester)
Connect3D X850XT PE
2*512MB Crucial memory
well, then ofcource the less critical stuff like hard drive and DVD burner. So the mobo is pretty much the only thing I'm still considering. But as in my original question, is that Gigabyte non-SLI really faster, or did I understand that review wrong..?

edit: the price gap between these two mobos is only like 50$ tops here in Finland<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by ronnie on 01/31/05 03:10 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Rugger]

If you're going ATI for your vid card, then you're wasting money on SLI. At this point you have to use Nvidia cards for SLI to work.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[Rugger]

Only $50 difference? The ASUS SLI is still $239USD here in the states and that's after a $26 rebate. I thought you were asking about an SLI board and the Giga is not...

From what I saw of the benchmarks, the giga does outperform the Asus - marginally. All of the NF4 boards will perform to within 2-4% of each other and that's not going to be noticeable. If you can get the better performance at a lower price, then all the better.

If you're not planning on upgrading for a while (another 4-5 years?) you might want to consider going s754. The s754 has a significantly better price/performance ratio at this point and s754 is faster than a similarly rated s939 (some say 200Mhz faster).

You said the hard drive is a less critical thing...I would say don't underestimate the impact a fast hard drive can have on system performance. What HDD are you going with? I also really recommend you get a good/stable PSU that is ATX v2.0 compatible.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[ronnie]

Yep, only 50$ difference, well that's about. That Asus a8n-sli costs here only 145€ which is about 190USD I believe. I know it's not that important to me to buy a SLI board, because of ATI graphics card.... but, maybe in the future I could sell that card and buy some new NVidia card to replace that, that's unlikely though.

Still, if the Gygabyte board costs less here, and it's even faster, then it might be the right choice, allthough Asus has more extra stuff and nice qualities with it. Maybe the Gigabyte board is quieter too, or then it could be even louder, I don't know.

I might very well upgrade my processor at some point so 939 it is.

I'm going with Hitachi Deskstar 250G 8MB SATA drive, NEC ND3520 DVD drive, PSU is Enermax EG495AX-VE Noisetaker which is ATX2.0 compatible I believe. I almost bought a Nexus case with a 400W PSU but then I started to worry if it's enough so I went with Enermax 485W.