Friday, December 06, 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.

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

Three 3300mfds, and seven 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 and fan.

The ATX connector is located behind the audio ports, in an area where users will be forced to contour power cables around the CPU, and possibly interfere with air circulation.

Three fan connectors are included, but only one is controlled by the hardware monitoring system, and it is used by the chipset fan.

Hardware monitoring is controlled by a Winbond W83697HF circuit.

This board does not permit the manual assignment of IRQs.

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

Audio capabilities are supplied by the integrated Realtek ALC650 sound-chip.

10/100Base-T Ethernet connectivity is made possible by Realtek RTL8100BL network controller.

Two Serial ATA Raid ports are supplied by Promise PDC20375 controller (optional).

An excellent suite of Overclocking features has been built-in, allowing users to alter the FSB frequency, and the Vcore, DDR, and AGP voltages.

Finally, as you might expect, the AX77-8X Max benefits from all the AOpen motherboard technologies that have made the company famous. These include Low ESR capacitors, CPU Over Current Protection, AGP Protection Technology, Die-Hard BIOS, Watch Dog Tier, Resettable Fuses, and the (optional) Dr. LED diagnostic panel.

Next: Additional features.

AOpen AK77-8x Max