[Review] ASUS K8N-DL EATX NFORCE4 Pro

[kakari]

Hello, all.

I've bought Asus K8N-DL EATX a while ago and am reviewing it before I fully assemble it into my new PC.

Asus K8N-DL is the only Asus's mobo that supports dual AMD opteron. It also comes with PCI-E, which makes this mobo better for workstation rather than server.

This motherboard costs 287.28 CAD from NCIX : http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...anufacture=ASUS

I will write its pro and con.

Below is a screenshot of the mobo as a whole.

As you can see, this motherboard can take up to 6 ram sticks up to DDR 400.

CPU0 slot can have 4 sticks and CPU1 slot can have 2 sticks.

CPU1's 2 ram space must be populated for this motherboard to work.

** Continued to my next post as I need to add more photo, sorry for double posts ! **

Edited January 19, 2006 by kakari

[kakari]

Pros -

1. It comes with PCI-E which allows you to use up to date video cards.

2. It is inexpensive for server/workstation motherboard. In fact, it is one of the cheapest available on market.

Even so, its features are reasonable good for its price.

3. Its chipset is Nforce 4 pro.

4. 4 SATA300 sockets

5. Firewire, which is somewhat rare for workstation/server board.

Cons -

1. See the photo below.

As you can see, the PCI-E slot is dangerously close to its mobo fan. If you buy a PCI-E card that is very long, it IS going to interfere with this fan. What it means that you cannot replace the fan with passive heatsink which will obviously be taller than the fan.

I've purchased a Xmdia GeForce 6600 / 256MB DDR / PCI Express, which I found was the shortest. Even so, see the photo below.

It STILL interferes with the mobo fan.

ALSO, when the video card was installed, its heatsink blocked one of two available PCI slots.

2. Although this is an EATX mobo, it is designed to fit into some of bigger ATX mid-tower. I am placing this in a 4U case with EATX capacity. So, there is no problem for me.

But for those who may be trying to place this it into a mid-tower and even a ful tower. BE CAREFUL.

Your HDD, Power, LED, reset wires may not reach as it is located very far.

3. CPU1 slot can only have 2 Ram sticks.

My conclusion ...

Regardless of its flaws, it is still a decent motherboard for its price. But, due to the fact that this is an economical motherboard, its layout is pretty messy and ,as I mentioned above, its PCI-E slot interferes with motherboard fan.

To me, this mobo is more of a workstaiton board rather than server board as it comes with PCI-E and no onboard video card. It does, hoever, comes with 8 channel auido.

Hope this review is helpful to those who are considering this motherboard.

Thank you. :whistle:

Edited January 19, 2006 by kakari