Monday, December 02, 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 to close to the AGP port, thus introducing the 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.

Four 3300mfds and two 1500mfds 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 not a fan.<

The ATX connector is located on the northeastern end of the motherboard, where it shouldn't get in the way of CPU ventilation.

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

Hardware monitoring is controlled by an ASUS ASB100-A circuit.

This board permits the manual assignment of IRQs.

USB 2.0 (480Mbps) ports are supported by the VIA VT8235 chip.

Audio capabilities are made possible by a Realtek ALC650 chip.

10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet connectivity is possible via an optional Broadcom BCM5702 network controller.

Serial ATA RAID is made possible by an optional Promise PDC20376 controller. Bear in mind that the only access to the RAID controller is available by the Serial-ATA connectors and that a Serial-ATA to ATA adaptor is required if your hard disk drives are not Serial-ATA.

Firewire ports are available as an option.

SPDIF connectors are available as an option.

A thermal sensor connector (PC probe) is available as an option.

A PCI slot labeled the "ASUS proprietary wireless slot" is included.

An excellent suite of Overclocking features are included, including the ability to adjust the Vcore, DDR, and AGP voltages.

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: Additional features.

Asus A7V8X