Thoughts

I've come away from my evaluation of the K8N-E very impressed. Given AMD's announcement recently of the budget Sempron line on Socket 754, along with low cost 2800+ and 3000+ full-featured Athlon 64 processors, the new features that the K8N-E brings to Socket 754, along with the overclocking potential, means that it's a desirable mainboard for users of this particular socket.

It's the features that drive this mainboard more than anything. The use of the 250Gb nForce3 variant, bringing with it GigE and those highly useful hardware firewall features for the home user, combined with plenty of USB2.0, FireWire400 and six SATA ports, means that ASUS push almost all the right buttons. Eight channel audio rounds things off.

The enthusiast will be crying out for CPU Vcore adjust, a notch more on the Vdimm adjust and some multiplier and HTT clock control, but the basics are there for a good overclockers board. Hopefully ASUS can deliver.

It's not too expensive and it's a decent feature-based upgrade from the K8V or other first generation Socket 754 mainboards.

The core logic does most of the hard work, ASUS applying just enough expertise to stop it falling into mediocrity. BIOS updates as soon as possible please ASUS, if they're possible. I'd hold off until then if you're an overclocker, jump in with both feet now if you want the nForce3 250Gb features in an ASUS Socket 754 board.

The first ASUS K8N is a great one.