Thursday, March 06, 2003

Technical details of the Asus A7N8X

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

The memory slots are located far enough from the AGP port that there is little chance of a retention bar coming into contact with the graphics card when installing memory.

The voltage regulation circuits are of the triple phase, bi-Mosfets variety.

Five 3300mfds, and three 1000mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket.

The CPU retention bar is made of plastic, so handle with care.

The Northbridge is capped with a heatsink, but no fan.

The ATX connector is located on the northeast end of the motherboard, where the power cables shouldn't interfere with ventilation.

Three fan connectors are included, all of which are controlled by the hardware monitoring system.

Hardware monitoring is controlled by an ITE IT8708F-A circuit.

This board permits the manual assignment of IRQs.

USB 2.0 (480Mbps) amd Firewire ports are provided by the nForce2 MCP-T Southbridge.

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

Two (optional) nVidia and 3com 10/100Base-T Ethernet controllers are included.

Two SerialATA Raid 0/1 ports are made possible by a Silicon Image Sil3112ACT (optional).

Some great Overclocking features, including adjustable Vcore, DDR, and AGP Voltages, are included, along with adjustable FSB frequencies.

This board includes "Q-Fan" technology, which allows the speed of the CPU-fan to be adjusted in response to changes in the temperature of the processor.

"AGP Warning LED" technology is included, which detects if an unsupported 3.3v AGP 2X graphics card has been installed. If such is the case, the system will refuse to boot, in order to avoid damage to the motherboard.

Asus C.O.P., and Asus Post Reporter technologies are included, which protect the CPU from overheating, and vocally alert the users of any troubles encountered at start-up.

Next: Technical details of the mainboard

Asus A7N8X