Processors And Cooling
Two gigantic Vigor Monsoon TEC CPU coolers block any good view of the motherboard's upper half, while providing exceptional cooling for overclocking the two Athlon FX-74 processors.
Unlike our previously tested Vigor Monsoon Lite, these "full version" coolers include the more elaborate front panel controllers, which offer temperature monitoring in addition to softer switching for reduced noise. Both front-panel TEC controllers can change color or temperature scale to suit individual preferences.
Motherboard
Asus' L1N64-SLI WS remains the premium choice for Quad FX gaming platforms, supporting a monumental twelve internal Serial ATA hard drives and two full-bandwidth PCI-Express x16 slots directly through Nvidia's 680a chipset. These surprising numbers come courtesy of two "Northbridge" components, which are linked directly to each other via AMD's HyperTransport protocol.
