Monday, November 25, 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.

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 and fan.

The ATX connector is situated between the CPU and the memory slots where the power cables shouldn't interfere with ventilation.

Five 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 determining, and notify, is the processor is overheating. It further allows the voltage to be ratcheted down if the CPU-fan fails, or the processor surpasses a pre-determined temperature.

USB 2.0 (480Mbps) ports are provided by a VIA VT6202 chip.

RAID capabilities are supplied by a Highpoint HPT374 controller.

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

10/100Base-T Ethernet functionality is provided by a Via VT6103 network controller.

Two Serial ATA ports are made possible by an integrated Marvell 88i8030 chip.

And finally, the BIOS can be rolled-back to the last batch of valid settings by pressing "CTRL + Insert" at start-up.

Next: Additional features.

AT7-max2 Max2