The Asus M3N-HT Deluxe is based on Nvidia's nForce 780a chipset that supports three-way SLI in 8x mode (and dual x16 mode), while it also has support for Hybrid SLI. The board features all solid capacitors surrounding the CPU area that leaves enough breathing space to allow proper airflow around the CPU area. Instead of the conventional eight phase power design, Asus has added two more power phases, giving you a total of ten, ensuring CPU stability when overclocked. The chipset as well as the voltage regulators are passively cooled using copper heatpipes while the voltage regulators can be further cooled by clipping the fan to the heatsink. The four memory slots support a maximum of 8 GB-DDR2 memory running at 1066 MHz. What makes this board unique among the other AMD boards tested would be the Memory Heat Pipes or MemPipe, as Asus calls it. The heatpipe comes separately and can be attached by screwing the base to the northbridge heatsink. The protruding copper block can then be clipped onto the first and third memory modules, which help in lowering the RAM temperature by a good 8 degrees C.



The scores might not be the best when compared to the other boards, but it's not only the performance that is taken into consideration. The features as well as the build quality of this board go beyond comparison. Overall layout of the board as well as the placement of the six SATA ports is pretty good. An added feature built into the board is the Linux GUI that allows you to surf, chat and check mail without the need to boot into Windows. Apart from these refined features, the rear panel is home to four USB ports, an S/PDIF out, gigabit LAN, eSATA, 7.1 channel audio, a VGA and an HDMI port.