ASUS A8N-E 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: I bought this incredible board based upon the good reviews I read. Of course I did my homework FIRST and even reviewed Asus’s online forum as well. I also downloaded the user manual BEFORE I received the motherboard. This was so I would be familiar with the motherboard BEFORE I installed it. Upon installing the motherboard in a completely new rig and Viola! Booted and posted on the very first try. Tweaked some CMOS settings and works even better. Did NOT install nvidia firewall or nvidia IDE drivers. NEVER install those! Those give you the BSOD. Even installed and successfully used Asus bios updater. Worked like a charm. My board came with 1010 bios. Flashed it to1011 in a few seconds. No hassles, no tears and no tissues needed. Board is feature rich and easy to use. Onboard cooling fan is not too bad either. Cannot hear it above my other case fans. Many fan connectors on board as well. Easy to understand manual and instructions make sense (if you read them!)

Cons: Do yourself a favor: Please read ALL the specifications before buying anything especially this item. That way you won’t have to cry and complain about this motherboard not having Firewire. I am so bored with all the whiners indicating this doesn’t have Firewire. Who cares! If you need that open then buy one that does! Deal with it or buy a motherboard that does have what you need. This is an easy solution to the braindonors that slam this amazing board for one reason or another.

Overall Review: Don’t believe ANY of the negative reviews here on Newegg. I would wager that 97% of the alleged DOA motherboards, etc.,are actually due to sloppy installations from noobs that have no business building their own rig. They should give it up and purchase a D*ll. I have NEVER had a bad motherboard or video card EVER! Regarding installing the drivers from the cd: don’t load the nvidia firewall or the IDE drivers. These will cause the BSOD. In fact, go to ndivia.com and download-install the newest drivers from there! This goes for your video cards as well. Yes, you need to go into CMOS and disable ALL the items you aren’t going to use. This includes the PEG link and other nefarious selections. This will allow your motherboard to operate faster and more efficiently. Don’t understand any of it? ASK FOR HELP and READ THE MANUAL. I guarantee you won’t have any problems if you do these steps. Furthermore, I never overclock anything…I would rather buy faster components than fry my CPU

Pros: Price, performance, and extra stuff

Cons: The software that comes with this mobo.

Overall Review: Just for all ppl that get BSOD on DRIVER_IRQL_NOT _LESS_OR_EQUAL on http.sys. Here are setps to fix it: If you cannot get into the normal windows xp, go to safe mode 1. Remove nivida access manager and nivida firewall 2. install latest chipset drivers. (Important: DO NOT INSTALL ACCESS MANAGER AND NIVIDA FIREWALL) 3. update with latest BIOS It took me one week to figure out what went wrong with this BSOD, and my computer is working perfect now. I hope this can help someone have the same problem as mine.

Pros: Easy manuals for new computer builds. This is my 3rd ASUS mobo. When you first install components and turn on computer to give it life.. FIRST thing to do. Install your ETHERNET PCI BRIDGE, have you Asus mobo cd in drive, go to Device manager, and update your "PCI bridge". It will install the ethernet controller,. Go to the ****http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us**** Download LASTEST CHIPSET FIRST for this motherboard, install it and THEN Update bios. DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT install the Nvidia Firewalls or IDE driver IF you are using the SATA connection on your harddrive!!! This is a simple as it can be. You cant go wrong. If your NOT into overclocking and worried about updating bios. Then theres really no need to update the bios. The latest version mainly gives you OC capalities. If your determined to update bios. Follow the manual on page 2-2. Its simple enough for a new builder. Have 2 floppies ready!

Cons: None for this price range and quality.

Overall Review: CHIPSET FAN NOTE: My chipset is a lucky one, after months it isnt going out like other reviewers. . If your worried about this and its making you hesitate buying this board. Seriously, do not worry! Simply call ASUS when you first build it, and state its going out, and BINGO new chipset fan! When a chipset fan goes out, it does not fry or blow up your computer. The fan simply stops, and you need to replace it. If you DONT replace, then of course yes, it can naturally harm with time..If too lazy to call ASUS, buy one, there like 10-20 bucks Stop reading and build already.

Pros: What more can I say this motherboard is truly amazing.. There is a feature to restore your mobo's original bios via this cd so no matter what happens you are safe. You can play music on your pc without even going into windows. Amazing when it comes to overclocking truly gets the job done.

Cons: No cons, BUT WARNING to all people that use nvidia's forceware network access manager or the forceware ip service COMPLETELY UNINSTALL that stuff before you even think about putting in your athlon x2 processor because it'll constantly cause your pc to crash to a blue screen and then restart by itself. (Just doesn't work well with those programs so get rid of them completely) I couldn't use the computer at all sometimes it'd crash to the blue screen while attempting to load up windows and other times it'd crash after I typed in my windows password sometimes it took awhile, but it ALWAYS happened pc was unusable. It never happened while I was in bios. Why isn't this a con? Because I also experienced the same issue on a different motherboard my abit an8-ultra mobo with my same athlon x2 4200+ cpu and the same thing occured so its DEFINETLY not the fault of the mobo.

Overall Review: Here is a fix for the problem! When this happened to me I just went to safe mode (be careful it can happen in safe mode too) Went to start, run, then typed msconfig and went to the startup tab and unchecked anything relating to nvidia's network access manager (the firewall) Then went to the services tab and did the same and I've had no problems since my pc is up and running and its EXTREMELY fast. If by any chance you got rid of that stuff and its all still happening just choose diagnostic setup which is guaranteed to allow your pc to boot with no problems without it being safe mode then one by one add things and when the blue screen happens again you found your problem. A clean install would've saved me the headache of having to find out the hard way, but I'm glad I found this out from the get go because I MOST LIKELY would ended up installing the network access manager and bam I would've thought (fresh install... new chips.... something broke?) I hope this helps!!

Pros: Cleanest layout of all the Nforce4 Ultra boards I looked over. Took all my components I had when making this build with no glitches at all. Manual was very detailed and informative. Lots of USB ports. Enough headers using the back plates that came with the board to also use one for the front USB on my case. Lots of features. NewEgg's and UPS's service. :)

Cons: Active cooling. I despise active cooling as eventualy the fan will fail. No Firewire.

Overall Review: I gave it 4 eggs for two reasons, no firewire and active cooling. It takes nothing away from the board iteslf as the price is very reasonable, and I had no problems with the cards and memory I got for it.I've had good luck with ASUS and so far so good. I didn't get this board for the RAID function and I never intend to use it. I got it for X2 support that was non SLI. I also never intend to use the integrated audio as I use an Xfi.

Pros: My motherboard made it all the way to South Korea in perfect condition. I am stationed in Seoul Korea, United States Army. I got my order in One Week!!! I have never recieved anything this fast from the states. This mother board installed very easily and works perfect. I had absolutely no issues putting my computer together. Everything has worked flawlessly. A8N-E, AMD 3700, 2GB CORSAIR 3-3-3-8, MSI 6800GS, ANTEC SONATA II (450 Watt). I kind of wished I would have went with the SLI version but I am trying to tell myself I don't need it. Ofcourse I don't. This set up plays NFS at full everything, not absolutely perfectly but almost. I haven't overclocked anything and will probably wait awhile for that.

Cons: I knew what I was buying before I hit send so absolutely none. There are no cons to this mother board.

Overall Review: Things to consider are whether you want to give yourself the option of going SLI or not. Fire Wire is a no go on this one as far as I can tell but I don't care. This is a nice board and I was absolutely impressed with newegg. You got this stuff all the way to Korea in perfect condition. For those of you who might be asking your self why did he order stuff all the way from the states when he could have bought it in Korea? It was more expensive to buy the parts that I could find here in Korea locally than it was to order them/ ship them from newegg. I was worried about the time for shipping and the condition of the products but I was completely satisfied. Great Job newegg!!!!

Pros: An amazing board for the price and performance. For 11 months straight now, this thing allowed me to overclock my opty 165 to 2.82GHz (313x9)with 2GB OCZ @ ddr402(266 divider) 1T with absolutely no issues. I bet I can even get more out of it if I had more voltage on the RAM (max: 3.0V)

Cons: Have had numerous lockups related to my SATA Raptor when I first got this board. Not sure if it was a flash to bios 1013 that solved it or not, but it doesn't happen anymore.

Overall Review: As much as I'd love to be an enthusiast, I'll probably run this current set-up until it fails to boot up, permanently. By then, hopefully my next upgrade will see gains that are well worth my money. And for all those continuing to have trouble with the chipset fan, here's another alternative apart from getting a zalman heatsink or other 3rd party chipset fan: go to asus estore and get yourself that same heatpipe they use for the A8N-SLI Premium. Works just as well as the chipset fan, will never break on you, and yes...it will fit.

Pros: What can I say? I'm not an overclocker, so my criterion is stability and no hassle. I dropped it into my case with memory (2x1GB), CPU (X2 4200+), Drives (2x25GB SATA2 + 1x120GB SATA2) and a video card, and it works great - never a problem.

Cons: None - I'm ordering 15 more for an organization Whose network I run.