reviewsTESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
both client and access-point functional-
ity. Asus also opted for beefy (and quieter)
heat pipes to cool not only the core-logic
chips, but also the board’s voltage-regula-
tor modules and capacitors.
The Asus and Foxconn boards are
amazingly similar in expansion-card options.
Both give you two PCI, one x1 and one x4
PCI-E, and two x16 PCI-E slots. Asus should
have done what Foxconn did by swapping
the position of the x4 slot with the x1 slot. As
it stands, if you run a double-wide graphics
card, you’ll block access to the x4 slot. We
actually prefer the version of the MN232-SLI
that’s only sold overseas—that board is con-
figured so you can run two dual-slot graphics
cards and still drop in a pair of PCI cards.
One of the niftiest items bundled with
this board is the Q-Connector kit. Instead
of plugging your front panel directly to
the motherboard, you plug the power-on,
reset, and LEDs into a connector block,
which goes into the case. If you need to
pull the mobo, just yank out the connector
block, and then plug it back in when you
reinstall the board, without having to mess
with the jumpers. Very trick.
On another note, Asus’ board suffers
one very glaring problem: the nForce 590
SLI supports six SATA ports but Asus
configured the board so two SATA ports
are blocked when running SLI. We initially
thought the company addressed that by
including two right-angle SATA cables, but
the cables are angled the wrong way! If
you use them, they block the other SATAports. D’oh! The offense is somewhat
lessened by the inclusion of two additional
(and accessible) SATA ports on a separate
Silicon Image controller card, but the mis-
take is nonetheless dopey.
When it comes to BIOS tweaking,
Asus gives you almost as many switches
and knobs to turn as the Foxconn board.
However, Asus doesn’t support nTune 5.0
nor its overclocking features from nVidia’s
Windows applet. Because Asus (like many
other board makers) uses overclocking
tools and a custom BIOS to differenti-
ate itself from the competition, it doesn’t
want to risk losing that edge. Custom
BIOSes are great, but we’d like to have the
Windows app as well.
As we noted in the Foxconn review, we
saw near-identical performance between
the two boards—not surprising, with both
BIOSes set the same. So in the end, the
choice comes down to the features that
you want and whether you can live with
the minor irritations of both boards’ wonky
component placement.The M2N32-SLI Deluxe features built-in Wi-Fi networking and beefy heat pipes for
quiet computing.$250, http://www.asus.comASUS M2N32-SLI DELUXEAIR FORCE
Quiet heat pipes, wireless
module, and Q-Connector
are pure Asus.
AIR GUITAR^9
Why offer six SATA ports and
then block two of them?