Friday, January 10, 2003

Technical details

The standard amount of space has been provided around the CPU socket in order to fit a P4 heatsink.

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.

Three 1200mfds, five 1500mfds, and four 560mfds 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 below the CPU, in a position where the power cables can be contoured around the unit without interfering with ventilation. The 12V connector, for its part, is located to the southwest of the processor.

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

Hardware monitoring is controlled by a Winbond Smart@IO W83697SF circuit.

This board permits the manual assignment of IRQs.

USB 2.0 (480Mbps), and "Firewire"/IEEE-1394 ports are included, thanks to the SiS 963 chip.

Audio capabilities are supplied by a six-channel C-Media CMI9739A sound-card.

An integrated Realtek RTL8201BL 10/100Base-T Ethernet controller is included.

Two Serial ATA ports are included, thanks to a Promise PDC20376 chip.

"AGP Warning LED" technology is included, which serves to detect if an incompatible 3.3V AGP 2X card is installed. If such is the case, the system will refuse to boot, thus preventing damage to the motherboard.

A number of Asus technologies are also included. Among them: "Asus C.O.P." which protects the CPU from overheating, "Asus Post Reporter" which reports start-up problems audibly, "ASUS EZ Flash BIOS" which allows the BIOS to be flashed without a boot-disk, and "Asus Q-Fan" which regulates the speed of the CPU fan in response to its temperature.

Next: Additional features.

Asus P4S8X