ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi Edition

Rob Williams

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The M2N32-SLI Deluxe is one feature packed motherboard in every sense of the word. Whether you are a hardcore gamer, enthusiast overclocker or Joe HTPC, this board delivers what you are looking for.

You can read the full review right here and then discuss it here!
 
U

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Chipset Fan

Isn't the fan supposed to blow air out ???
 

Rob Williams

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I can't see how it could. The only openings is on the bottom, where air blows onto the chipset, and on each side of the fan. After turning it on, I couldn't feel air blowing out either side of the fan. I fail to really understand how it sucks cool air in, either.

I could be analyzing it wrong, but it's a simple cooler, and just doesn't make much sense to me.
 

Jakal

Tech Monkey
From my understanding, the fan is the same as what is provided in previous Asus boards. The heatpipe coolers are supposed to be actively cooled by the fan. Drawing air in from the side and exhausting it onto the fins of the heatpipe. This "blower" design is not as cooling effective, unless there is high rpm. That's the main reason heatsink fans have kept the same basic design over the years. The biggest advantage is that you can point the air into any particular direction. Input through the side exhaust at the bottom.

Here's an example of a Thermaltake chipset cooler.
http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/coolers/chipset/a1899.htm

Note how the rated rpms go from 5k-9k. The design requires that much higher of an rpm to acheive the same airflow as a regular 40mm fan. They are effective, but they cannot acheive both low noise and high airflow.

I have a friend that used a cpu heatsink based off the same principle. He spent something like $60 because it was the latest. We had similar chips. He a AMD XP2600+ and I a 2400+. I purchased a Volcano 12 for under $30. Turns out the Volcano kept his chip roughly 5c cooler at lower rpms. He eventually bought another heatsink.
 

madstork91

The One, The Only...
If not this exact board then one with a very simular layout and design was used when I build my friends new PC. The only complaint I had about it was the onboard sound. It was complete garbage.
 

dloneranger

Obliviot
The manual states that the fan is only to be used if are using a watercooled solution for your cpu - they include it in a lot of the motherboards with heatpipes
Personally I use it to cool a hard drive - works great :)
 

dloneranger

Obliviot
Oh, a few other things

1)The microphone came with a sticky velcro thing in my package - one half on the microphone, the other on the monitor and no more falling off the back :)
Also the reason it's got two microphones is that it's a noise cancelling version - it does a pretty good job of just picking up what's between the two microphones and ignoring what's outside of them, great if you want to chat and listen to music/play games at the same time

2)It only has one PATA ide socket :mad:
If you're upgrading and have 2 PATA drives and 2 dvd drives then your out of luck - you've got to get an IDE PCI card and finding ones that work with dvd's can be a problem

3) At least on mine, the wireless lan card is removable - I took mine out and put it into my server (that uses a similar board from asus)
I don't actually use it (luck enough to move into a house that has lan sockets in every room!!), but it's handy when people bring laptops around - saves hunting for cables to patch into the switch

4)They also do a souped up version of this board called 'Crosshair' that has some nice features - the lit-up back panel is kinda cute and saves having to find a torch or pull the pc out when you're trying to find the usb ports
http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=0&model=1283&modelmenu=1

5)The only thing I don't like about it is that it's not very resistant to spilling a can of beer into the pc - it go boom!!!! <grrr>
I'd be happy to pay extra for a water resistant version - my cheap watch can do it <grin>
 
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Rob Williams

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Thanks for the comments dloneranger...

Regarding the chipset fan... I do run a water cooling rig but fail to see why exactly it would matter. It clips perfectly on the heatsink, and in the manual it shows a solution with two of them... one on each appropriate area.

As for the microphone, I didn't have a clue about the noise cancelling... interesting. I never did much testing in that regard because I don't have good speakers hooked up. I only used headphones for a half hour.

Wireless... Ok I hope I can't remove mine, because I am not sure how I'd overlook something so simple. It looked like it was integrated into the board when I took a look. I will check it out later.

Crosshair... yes I want that only for the sake of the 3.425vdimm. I have a DFI on the way that allows for 3.0vdimm though, so it should suffice.
 

dloneranger

Obliviot
Regarding the chipset fan... I do run a water cooling rig but fail to see why exactly it would matter. It clips perfectly on the heatsink, and in the manual it shows a solution with two of them... one on each appropriate area.

I think that's for illustration of where they go :)
When the cpu uses a standard heatsink/fan, the airflow blows through the heatpipe coolers but when you use watercooling you dont get any airflow and need the extra fan

It's not mentioned in detail in the manual for this board, but in other asus boards I've got (eg a8n-sli deluxe), there's a better description that warns you to not install the fan unless you use water cooling - but it's still usefull as way too cool a specific thing that might get too hot

ps I edited my post (2 above)
 
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Rob Williams

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I agree... it may not be completely useless. I would just expect it to have a more popular design maybe... I don't know.

As for a beer resistant PC, I am not sure about that. I know that's something Greg here could benefit from :-D
 

dloneranger

Obliviot
<sigh> It's a common failing
I think I'm keeping logitech in the green with the amount of keyboards I have to buy - I seem to have a fascination with spilling things into them
It's got to the point where I buy them in bulk to save time :p
 
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Rob Williams

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Haha! I do occasionally drop something into my keyboard, but nothing major. Regardless, I guarentee my keyboard is more germ induced than the rest of the house, heh.

Taking a macro shot can verify that =/
 

Rob Williams

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Aye, they are good to us over there. Just to set things straight though, DailyTech is a seperate entity from AnandTech :p
 
U

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sli message

I just bought this motherboard, but becoz it's so expensive, I could only but one videocard to go with it. I thougt I can always buy another one later on.

But now, whenever I startup my computer I get this message: sli not configured correctly.

A friend of mine who has a different motherboard with sli told me that he had a switch on the motherboard with which you could switch between single card or sli. I looked for a switch like that, but it seems they forgot about it??? It's not a big problem, but sometimes it's really annoying.

Apart from that, I am very happy I bought this motherboard. It has every functionality I dream of.
 

Rob Williams

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Hmm, that's strange. What video card do you have? I have -never- had that error. Do you mean in Windows, or the actual POST? I know the latest NVIDIA drivers will nag you about SLI even if you've never had it to begin with.

"A friend of mine who has a different motherboard with sli told me that he had a switch on the motherboard with which you could switch between single card or sli."

Yes, a lot are like this, but they don't usually come with SLI equipped straight out of the box. It's something people have to enable.
 

Jakal

Tech Monkey
Could it possibly be an incorrect setting in the bios? I really doubt it, but I've heard of stranger problems.
 

dloneranger

Obliviot
But now, whenever I startup my computer I get this message: sli not configured correctly.

Just to be clear do you have 1 or 2 cards? (I'm not sure if you've just bought a second one and this message has just started to appear)
If you have 2 cards, what are they?

Where does the message appear? In the POST or in the systray after windows has started
If it's in systray and you have nvidia cards then get the latest drivers from nvidia - it's a known problem with older drivers
 
U

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sli message

Thnx for your replies.

I have only one video card. The 7300 gt. And the message comes from windows, from the systray.

I didn't change anything in my bios, but I could try to find out if there's something there. It is possible that they decided to put this in the bios instead of making a switch.
 
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