Conclusion:
For all the gamers out there who are looking for a low cost SLI system, this would be a great place to start. Not only is the board affordable, but it also has some extra features that make it stand apart from the others.
Gigabyte's famous Dual BIOS allows for some extra stability and is packed along with a Q-Flash utility for easy BIOS flashing. Overclocking is also made simple with the Easy Tune 5 program.
On the downside, I have never been much of a fan of the passive chipset heat sinks and would have preferred a fan cooled chip (although I can see Gigabyte's position, too). I was also unable to increase voltage to the CPU from BIOS even when it showed that it saved. Finally, the RAM voltage didn't allow for a very large overclock of the OCZ BH5 sticks at 2.8V and the DIMM slots are too close together for some manufacturer's heat spreaders.
A quick search of
PriceGrabber finds the Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI motherboard available at many major distributors starting around $106. That is definitely a good price for getting yourself set up on an SLI board with many quality features.
Overall I have to give the
Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI motherboard a score of 4 out of 5 stars and a rating of being a "Good Value".
Final Rating (4 out of 5 stars):
Pros:
• Good price for an SLI board
• DUAL BIOS
• Q-Flash
• Easy Tune 5
Cons:
• Passive chipset heatsink
• Vcore didn't reflect changes in BIOS
• Low VDIMM (only 2.8V)
• Small overclock due to low VDIMM
• DDR spaced too close for larger heatspreaders
Special thanks to
Gigabyte for providing the GA-K8N Pro-SLI motherboard to BigBruin.Com for review!
