AMD Athlon 3500

AMD Athlon 3500+ ($267 shipped); memory is 2 Samsung DIM-DDR400-512 sticks (1 GB total) from Directron ($77.98 shipped). I got this board ($168 shipped) and the processor from BuyXG.com, which had the best all-round price and shipping deal for both, and good ratings. I upgraded from an Asus TUSL2-C, which was about the best board when it was released, and found myself very loyal to Asus following that experience. I did a lot of research before diving in to the A8N-SLI Deluxe. This new board did not disappoint; neither would the non-deluxe version if you don't need the ultimate expandibility the Deluxe brings and you want a heavier wallet. Excellent, easy to read instructions. Form factor is larger that the old board, but it fit fine into my Antec SOHO SX-1035B server case. Processing a particular Quark Xpress file into print-output-quality Adobe Acrobat took 90 seconds. Previously, I could watch almost an entire MASH episode on DVD while the same file processed for 20 minutes on the old system with an 800 MHz PIII and 512 of RAM. I was frankly blown away. No jumpers to fool with unless you want to overclock and the like. The only squinting I had to do was when plugging in the case lights, as the printing is very small, even for someone with good eyesight (but that's a problem with many boards). At this writing, Asus has certified only 3 power supplies for this unit, all of them up there in price. However, I upgraded to a TTGI Super Flower 520 Watt from Directron (about $40) at the same time, and is humming along fine. The PS comes with a 20-pin connector, but the board has a 24-pin. No worries, as 20-pin power supplies work just fine; they can plug in only one way. I can't comment on the SLI performance, I'm using just one 6600GT at this point. If you want to get a board for the future, and that won't be obsolete as quickly as others out there, as SLI and 939 are, this is the board to get. Installation was relatively easy. Windows would not start following the board and chip changeout, but running XP's repair install got it back in shape. Since I had only the original XP disk, I had to run the SP2 installer to get everything working. The only difficulty I did have was getting the built-in networking to work. Running the installer would not work right, so I uninstalled it and did a manual install by pointing to the drivers on the disk. 8 hours from beginning the process to smokin' performance. I was expecting a worse time, but it was relatively smooth. A great board!