The AMD kit came with a AVC cooler called the AVC Z7U7414002-3505 cooler. AMD has changed the CPU cooling bracket to a single prong instead of the three prongs on the Socket 939 bracket. The AVC cooler is similar to the one we use for all AMD testing and is an excellent cooler. The rest of the kit consisted of a pair of Corsair XMS8500 DDR 2, and the CPU.

AMD decided to use an Artic-Silver like thermal paste to cover the CPU. One of the issues I’ve had with AMD CPUs is the thermal paste tends to stick to the CPU so much that the CPU comes off with the heat sink when removing the CPU. That is one issue that isn’t present on Intel CPUs as there is a flip cover over the CPU holding it in place. During two weeks of extended testing no stability issues were observed with either the FX-62 or 5000+.

One oddity did occur with the NVIDIA reference drivers on the ASUS motherboard. The NVIDIA reference drivers would crash while installing the Ethernet portion of the driver. Upon reboot, the Ethernet would not be installed. Installing the ASUS drivers that came with the review kit fixed the problem. The Foxconn motherboard installed the NVIDIA reference drivers without issue.

The ASUS M32N-SLI Deluxe Wi-fi motherboard is ASUS’s flagship motherboard for the M2 launch. They will also launch versions of NVIDIA’s nForce 570 SLI, Ultra, and 550 motherboards. This board features AI NOS Overclocking, Wireless networking, a slew of SATA ports and is a fine example of ASUS motherboard. Unfortunately, the driver issues caused me to use the AMD provided driver and not the NVIDIA drivers.