The board has an intriguing exterior thanks to the slots and some connectors matching with the textolite in color and a cooler made of semitransparent plastic and illuminated with 3 LEDs. Also, the board sports a lot of integrated controllers. That is why it can easily draw attention of many buyers. Accessories:
The layout has typical drawbacks: audio-ins are in front of the PCI, and the IDE are behind them; it's not easy to deal with additional IDE connectors and the ones located between the board's lower edge and memory modules, and when a video card is installed it's difficult to handle the memory modules. It can be difficult to reach some jumpers when the board is already installed. Their functions are not shown on the textolite. The 3-channel switching voltage regulator incorporates 4 capacitors of 3300 uF and 12 of 1200 uF. The following controllers are integrated:
Thanks to the Winbond W83637HF-AW Smart I/O controller the board supports (and have connectors) SD/MS Card Readers. Non-unsoldered connectors: none. The system monitoring is supported by the Winbond W83627HF-AW chip. What is controlled:
There are 2 connectors for adjustable and 1 for unadjustable connection of fans (connected to a fan on the MCH's heatsink). Brief characteristics of the board:
memory slots - 2 DDR SDRAM; expansion slots - AGP/ 5 PCI; I/O ports - 2 COM/ LPT/
2 PS/2/ 6 USB 2.0; dimensions - 305x210 mm.
Adjustment
can be carried out with:
We used the BIOS of 07.11.2002 as the latest available version. The board has quite good parameters, and if it had a bit richer accessory pack, it could be one of the most feature-laden solutions on the i845PE chipset. At the same time, some of its shortcomings do not let me to recommend it for everyone out there, that is why it remains a good solution for budget-concious people. Test results:
Dmitry Mayorov (destrax@ixbt.com)
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