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BFG Tech 590 SLI Motherboard Review

BFGRAN590S… or Something

February 26, 2007

By Josh Walrath

            The cooling of the board is somewhat interesting, but not terribly exciting.  The southbridge fan has the nice yellow/green fluorescent color which glows nicely under a black light.  The cooler is made of copper, and does a good job in keeping the chip cool.  Because it is a fan, there is the potential that the fan will fail.  The northbridge is passively cooled with a large finned unit.  Unfortunately this gets pretty hot without any airflow around it.  I would have rather seen a larger, integrated heatpipe affair like the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe board or the latest nForce 680i based boards.  If a user has a case with a side mounted fan blowing directly onto the northbridge cooler, then it will not be an issue.  Still, it would have been nice to have more robust cooling.

            The capacitors used on this board are not poly caps, but they do appear to be quality units.  They are all rated for 105C use, so it is unlikely that these units will burst with regular use.  The only other downside to the design that I have found was the DIMM placement.  The DIMMS are closely nestled against the CPU fan mounting bracket.  With the AMD supplied heatsink used for this review, the heatsink was touching the low profile DIMMS and slightly bending the first one.  For those with larger DIMMS such as the Corsair Pro versions with the LED’s or the latest OCZ units with the huge heatsink, this is going to be an issue.  Once cure is to move the DIMMS into slots 2 and 4 vs. the standard 1 and 3.  But this only works with two DIMMS are used.  For those wishing to utilize all 4 slots, then memory choice is going to limited to less exciting DIMMS. 

This rather unfortunate design "feature" will cause issues with larger heatsinks and DIMMS.  The heatsink in this instance just barely touches the DIMM, so it is not tilted and resting off of the CPU.

             The BIOS is exceedingly detailed, with the ability to adjust nearly any timing imaginable on the memory.  It was designed as an overclocking BIOS, and it can be intimidating for beginning users not familiar with a lot of the terminology.  The BIOS basically gives everything an advanced user could want, and allows for some serious overclocking with the right equipment.

            Finally we have the onboard LED diagnostic unit.  This exhibits specific post codes if the board boots up correctly, or if there is an issue during post.  This is handy for troubleshooting the board when things do not start up as expected.  The board also features the onboard power and reset buttons for those looking to test this board outside of a case.  It is handy, but of little use in daily affairs.

The bottom of the board is the typical spot for all the floppy and SATA connectors.  Note as well the LED diagnostic readout below the fan, as well as the reset and power buttons in the bottom right.

 Setup

            While Vista is released, I have not yet been able to work out an effective testing strategy for using it.  Currently I am using Windows XP Professional 64, and I honestly could not be happier with the support and stability of that product.  I compared the BFG motherboard to the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe rev. 1.02. 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Processor (2.6 GHz, 512 KB L2 per core)

2 GB Super Talent DDR-2 800 @ 4:4:3:8 timings

NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2

Seagate 320 GB 7200.10 Barracuda Hard Drive

Toshiba DVD-ROM

Windows XP Professional 64

Forceware 9.35 for nForce 590 SLI

Forceware 93.81 for GeForce 7950 GX2

DirectX 9.0c 

            The rev. 1.02 M2N32-SLI was originally included with the AMD release of their AM2 based processors.  The shipping version of the board was the 1.03, which was much more optimized for overclocking, but featured the same overall performance.  The rev. 1.02 version can only make it to around 294 MHz HTT speeds vs. the 340 MHz+ of the rev. 1.03 model.

            Both boards ran the X2 5000+ at 2611.9 MHz.  The memory was run at 373 MHz (DDR-2 746 effective) with 4:4:3:8 timings at 2.1 volts.  Everything else was set at default.

The top of the board is fairly well laid out, but the DIMMS again are far too close to the heatsink mounting bracket on the CPU.

            BFG is utilizing the rev. 2.0 version of this board.  This is a new revision, but the changes made are not known at this time.  Components look the same, but some low level trace changes are probably the reason for the new revision.  Hopefully this will have a positive effect on overclocking, as the original Foxconn C51 boards could only reach around 286 to 290 MHz HTT with extravagant measures.

Next:  Results

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