Thursday, October 03, 2002

Technical details

Plenty of space has been left open around the CPU socket, which should allow for the installation of large heatsinks.

The memory slots are located too close to the AGP port, thus introducing the chance of a retention bar coming into contact with the graphics card when installing memory.

Seven 3300mfds, and three 2200mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket.

The CPU retention bar is made of metal, so there's little chance of it breaking.

The Northbridge is capped with a heatsink, but not a fan.

The ATX connector is located behind the audio ports in a position that forces users to contour the power cables around the CPU.

Three fan connectors are included, but only two are controlled by the hardware monitoring system.

Hardware monitoring is controlled by a Winbond W83697HF circuit.

This board permits the manual assignment of IRQs.

The hardware monitoring system is capable of alerting users if the CPU fan fails, and can lower the CPU voltage upon such an occurrence, or if the CPU's temperature exceeds a user-determined value.

USB 2.0 (480Mbits/sec) are includes, and are provided by the VIA VT8235 chip.

RAID capabilities are supplied by a Highpoint HPT374 controller.

Audio capabilities are supplied by a Realtek ALC650 sound-chip.

10/100Base-T Ethernet capabilities are provided by the Via VT6103

And finally, the 8K5A3+ includes an alphanumeric LED diagnostic panel.

Next: Additional features.

EPoX 8k5a3+