Which mobo to choose? Asus or Epox?

[zaku178]

I got an Opteron 165 (dual core) which I plan to overlock and was wondering which mobo to choose the Epox EP-9NPA+SLI or Asus A8N-SLI? Which has a better overclock performance? I was originally going to get the Epox EP-9NPA+ but that mobo has USB 2.0 problems and I am not intending to use the SLI function anyway. I am only choosing EP-9NPA+ SLI or Asus A8N-SLI since either doesnt have a usb 2.0 problem but unfortantly I already heard about the bad heatsink fan on the nforce 4 chipset for the ASUS. Which mobo is recommended??

 

[Pyrokinetic]

I would not choose the Epox based on the layout alone (The 24-pin PSU connector is in an awful location). The ASUS SLI boards come in three flavors: SLI, Deluxe, and Premium. The Premium does not have a fan on the chipset as it uses a heatpipe with passive cooling (DO NOT use with a reverse-ATX case design though) and uses a software-based SLI switcher instead of a paddle card. It was recently favorably reviewed by Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2661

The base ASUS SLI board is not as good of an overclocker (from what I've read) as the Deluxe and Premium. The newer Deluxe models should now come with the redesigned chipset fans, instead of the trouble-prone older ones. If you do get one of the older fans (which may work just fine), ASUS will replace it, no questions asked:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=50923