A8N-SLI Premium motherboard with heat pipe design
 

Taipei, Taiwan; May 31, 2005 – ASUSTeK Computerc Inc. (ASUS), the worldwide leader of motherboards, today debuted the new AI (ASUS Intelligence) Cool-Pipe design on the A8N-SLI Premium motherboard, which incorporated the unique heat pipe design to deliver both excellent heat dissipation and fan-less quiet operation. Besides advanced cooling technology, the new ASUS motherboard further offers stable overclockability to bring out the true potential of dual graphics card performance.

“With AI Cool-Pipe, it’s no longer either quiet operation or low system temperature,” said Joe Hsieh, Director of ASUS Motherboard Business. “The A8N-SLI Premium, with the new thermal design, lets you have the best of both worlds. This design provides heat dissipation performance comparable to that of cooling fans without the annoying fan rotation noise.”

AI Cool-Pipe
Compared with competing motherboards with fan solutions and configured identically, the A8N-SLI Premium delivered superior performance at much lower temperature. The A8N-SLI Premium allows high-performance and stable SLI (Scalable Link Interface) dual-graphics card operation without a noisy cooling fan and possible fan failures to disturb the overall computing experience.

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AI Selector
Another exclusive feature on the A8N-SLI Premium is AI Selector. Users of the A8N-SLI Premium no longer need to open the PC case and unplug and plug the selector card on the motherboard to change graphics card modes. Instead of a selector card, the A8N-SLI Premium adopted a PCI Express switch IC (integrated circuit) to provide quick switching between SLI and non-SLI operation with just a few clicks on the mouse.

AI Selector allows select different graphics modes:
1. Single video card mode
2. Dual video card (SLI) mode
-Two identical SLI-ready graphics cards running on SLI mode
-Two graphics cards operating independently providing multiple display output

“The A8N-SLI Premium with AI Selector represents motherboard engineering at its best. It provides the most convenient platform for either one or two graphics engines,” said Hsieh. “We are pleased to announce the availability of this innovative solution for those who demand the most user-friendly product in video performance.”

The A8N-SLI Premium is now available. For more information on the motherboard and other ASUS products, please visit the company homepage at www.asus.com.

Specification summary:
- Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64 CPU/Athlon 64 X2
- Nvidia nForce4 SLI chipset
- FSB 2000/1600 MT/s
- Dual-channel DDR400/333/266
- 2*PCIex16/2*PCIex1/3*PCI slots
- 4*SATA 3Gb/s and 2*ATA133 support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD
- 4*SATA 1.5Gb/s support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5
- 2*Gbit LAN
- 2*1394 ports

About ASUS
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (TSE:2357), is a leading provider of 3C total solutions. Its product portfolio includes notebooks, motherboards, graphics cards, optical drives, information appliances, desktop PCs, servers, wireless solutions, mobile phones and networking devices. With world-class engineering and offices and subsidiaries located in all corners of the world, ASUSTeK provides innovative solutions to consumers, businesses and OEM/ODM customers. The company is the perennial leader of the motherboard and graphics card industries and a top 10 player globally for notebooks, optical drives, broadband modems and a wide range of other products.

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what happens when you use passive CPU cooling? as it seems that the NB cooling relies on airflow from the CPU cooler

things would even get worse if you'd have a fanless PSU

I still prefer that over a lousy 40mm whinemaster fan as it's done on most other motherboards.

passive chipset cooling should be standard