Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-087-AS)

I am quite keen on ordering this new mobo from ASUS (PCI Express for AMD
proc.) and was wondering whether someone with knowledge and experience in PC
building could comment on how risky it is to buy a rather new mobo.
I have looked at the ASUS site and they still do not have any documentation
apart from two BIOS recently posted.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Jordan

 

Typical ASUS,they dont even have the board out yet and there are 2 bios's for
it. Asus has the worst bios of any board,they can never get one to work
right,you have to use the one with the least issues.

 

The problem with getting a new toy that has just been invented is that
it simply isn't "tried and tested" to the extent that all minor
design-flaws and bugs have been eliminated, or that later revisions will
come with a better support for newer hardware.

If you want a rock-stable system that boots every time you press the
button, and doesn't fail, get a board that has been on the market a few
months. You'll most likely get a newer revision of the board than the
one that first came out.

If you want the latest of the latest, buy it knowing you might encounter
some problems along the way, be it crashes, not booting, some hardware
not working or anything else you can think of with a mobo. Fixes in the
form of bios-updates may come, but some things can only be fixed by
changing parts - and thus creating a new revision of the board.

I can't tell you how many problems the ASUS A8N-SLI might give. But the
chances you'll run into problems are far greater than with boards that
have been on the market for some time.

 

Buying the first revisions (1.00, 1.01) of any board is risky if you ask
me, seems to me there is always a bug or two that needs fixing in the
early revisions, I'd at least wait and see what the early adopters,
reviewers are saying about the board.

I always seem to buy revision 1.03 or later boards, no problems here. ;p

Ed

 

Thanks for your explanations. I could not agree more, however tempting it is
to get a SLI motherboard it is still too risky to jump in.
The only review I have seen is this one:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=98&type=expert&pid=2

As I am first-time builder and do not have much experience does ever happen
that one is able to exchange a faulty mobo due to the manufacturer? How easy
could this be?

Cheers,
Jordan

 

There is always a chance you get a dud, read the vendors exchange/return
policy, after that you have to deal with Asus or whoever. I've been
buying parts from Newegg for the last couple years without any problems.

Ed