A switchless SLI configuration allows two PCI Express x16 slots to work in tandem with dual VGA cards and supply the full 16 PCI Express lanes to each. Further expansion is taken care of by three PCI slots and one PCI-Express x4 slot. There are also three USB, one IEEE 1394a and one parallel port header on the motherboard. The way the board has been laid out, even with two dual-slot PCI Express cards installed there are still at least two PCI slots open, say for a wireless network or sound card. There are 20mm between the back of the first videocard and the copper northbridge heatsink directly above it.

In this corner we find six SATA jacks that are directly supported by NF5-590-SLI chipset. The SATA ports offer up RAID mode 0, 1, 0+1 and 5. The two low profile chipset heatsinks are short enough that they won't interfere with longer videocards. In total there are 7 fan headers on the ASUS M2N32SLI Deluxe motherboard. There is no backup BIOS however.

The ASUS M2N32SLI Deluxe motherboard supports up to 16GB of DDR2 memory. The Hypertransport bus runs at 2 GHz and the memory controller runs at CPU speed. The 940-pin 'AM2' socket will not work with socket 939 CPUs, or 940-pin Opteron processors. The manual recommends only ATX 2.0 power supplies be used with the M2N32-SLI DLX, and preferably something in the 500W range. Also note that with the nVidia nForce 590 chipset there just one IDE channel remains. The socket AM2 mounting holes and heatsink retention frame are new for this processor class, and not necessarily compatible with all K8 heatsinks as we've already mentioned.

The passive copper cooling system for the chipsets and VRM works well with adjacent CPU heatsink exhaust airflow alone. If you are using a watercooling system however, Asus suggest attaching the accompanying squirrel cage fan for additional cooling capabilities.

Now that we've covered the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard from head to toe it's time to overclock this sucker to the max!