Tuesday, July 09, 2002

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 much too close to 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.

Eight 2200mfds, and four 1500mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket.

The principal, and 12v ATX connectors are located SouthWest of the CPU, in a position that forces users to contour the power cables around the processor socket. A peripheral power connector is also located in the general vicinity, and will allow users without a proper P4 power supply to use it, to supply the 12v current.

The CPU retention bar is made of metal, so there's little chance of it breaking.

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

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

Hardware monitoring is controlled by a Winbond W83627HF circuit.

It's not possible to manually assign IRQs.

USB 2.0 connectors are present, and are controlled by the chipset.

Audio capabilities are supplied by a Realtek ALC650 audio-chip

A thermal sensor connector (labeled JP9) is included.

Unfortunately the BIOS cannot be rolled-back to the last batch of valid settings by simply pressing "Insert", or a similar hot-key at start-up.

Next: Additional features

Soltek SL-85DR2