Asus A8N-SLI: Deluxe or Premium?

Hi,

I am looking to get my dealer to replace my Asus A8V-E Deluxe board sitting
in my HTPC due to problems with the USB ports. I am thinking of replacing it
with one of the A8N-boards based on the nVidia-chipset since I have a bit
more faith in them with regards to stability over the VIA-chipset.

The most important features for me are:
* SLI
* Passively cooled chipset (maybe not out-of-the-box but using e.g. Zalman
NG47J)
* NICs support WOL
* SATA RAID
* AMD Cool & Quiet
* Supports dual core CPUs

Can anyone tell me what the differences are between the Deluxe and Premium
editions (apart from the cool-pipe)?

Regards
Anders

 

Asus has a comparison tool at their website.

http://dk.asus.com/products_compare.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1

It looks like the main difference between the Deluxe and the Premium, over
the heatpipe, is that the Premium has no SLI selector card. (It has
additional circuitry that permits the switch to SLI to be controlled by BIOS
settings.)

The chipset cooler of the Premium is compatible with the Deluxe. In the US,
it's available for $15 + $5 shipping:

http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=2535&catid=136

(I'm running one on a vanilla A8N-SLI. It was easy enough to install with
the mainboard out of the case.)


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.