ASUS offers up an affordable motherboard from the new nForce 600 series family; the P5N-E SLI featuring the nForce 650i chipset. To put it plainly, this motherboard gave us awesome overclocking for the money spent.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h … VzaWFzdA==
Looks to be considerably cheaper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6813131142 .
The P5N-E SLI is one impressive piece of hardware. It’s performance both stock and overclocking-wise remains neck in neck with it’s more expensive nForce 680i based brother, and its features are more than adequate for most competitive systems. The BIOS layout and design overall is straightforward, with more than enough tweaking features available to please any enthusiast.
However, there are a few areas of improvement that became more apparent during the overclocking test runs. My biggest complaints center on the board cooling mechanisms, or lack thereof. The northbridge passive chipset cooler was barely adequate for stock running, but quickly became too hot to handle when any overclocking was attempted. This was easily remedied with a low speed fan. The southbridge also suffered from heat issues, more so due to the fact that ASUS chose not to cool this chipset furnace. Again, the addition on an active cooling solution easily solved this problem.
Barring my heat related rants, this is the board to get if your looking to get in to the Core2 Duo world. It’s price point is sure to be competitive, since NVIDIA seems to be pointing the nForce 650i at the more mainstream user. With its performance easily equaling that of the nForce 680i, it makes the choice a no brainer. Well, what are you waiting for, go get a P5N-E SLI, you won’t be disappointed…
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h … VzaWFzdA==
Looks to be considerably cheaper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6813131142 .
The P5N-E SLI is one impressive piece of hardware. It’s performance both stock and overclocking-wise remains neck in neck with it’s more expensive nForce 680i based brother, and its features are more than adequate for most competitive systems. The BIOS layout and design overall is straightforward, with more than enough tweaking features available to please any enthusiast.
However, there are a few areas of improvement that became more apparent during the overclocking test runs. My biggest complaints center on the board cooling mechanisms, or lack thereof. The northbridge passive chipset cooler was barely adequate for stock running, but quickly became too hot to handle when any overclocking was attempted. This was easily remedied with a low speed fan. The southbridge also suffered from heat issues, more so due to the fact that ASUS chose not to cool this chipset furnace. Again, the addition on an active cooling solution easily solved this problem.
Barring my heat related rants, this is the board to get if your looking to get in to the Core2 Duo world. It’s price point is sure to be competitive, since NVIDIA seems to be pointing the nForce 650i at the more mainstream user. With its performance easily equaling that of the nForce 680i, it makes the choice a no brainer. Well, what are you waiting for, go get a P5N-E SLI, you won’t be disappointed…
Last edited by Kmarion (2007-01-02 02:32:57)
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