Gigabyte GA-K8N PRO-SLI Motherboard (Athlon 64, Socket 939, nForce4 SLI, ATX, 4GB DDR, 2000MHz FSB)

Reviewed by: r_sweene

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Reliable, price, features

Weaknesses: Included software crashed system, poor website support

Overall Evaluation: I have owned several Gigabyte boards over the years, and have never had any problems. I buy Gigabyte because the boards usually have a decent set of features (on-board ethernet, sound, controllers, etc.) at a reasonable price. I chose this model because I wanted support for PCI Express and SATA 3G. Unfortunately, the included NVidia access manager / firewall software caused all kinds of problems. First, the system repeatedly crashed. It was also common for the computer to re-boot right after start up. When it did run, all of my file downloads were corrupted. I tried replacing drivers, RAM tests, updating the BIOS, etc. for weeks to find the problem. Eventually, I discovered it was the NVIDIA software. I tried disabling the firewall part, but this did not help. After uninstalling the software completely (replaced the firewall with Norton Firewall), everything is fine and I have had no problems for the last two months. Along the way, I discovered that the Gigabyte website is terrible on support. Same thing with Nvidia's website, which doesn't even provide support for their software. Gigabyte is great on providing downloads, drivers and manuals, but they do not have much support when something goes wrong. Other than the issue with the Nvidia software, I only had a minor problem with "echoing" sound output that was fixed by changing the digital output setting in the included sound software. I will probably continue to buy Gigabyte boards, but my advice is to avoid this model or uninstall the included Nvidia software if you have problems.