Related Articles

The Board

I am quite happy with the expansion capabilities of the board, three GPU slots (16x, 8x and 4x respectively), one PCIe 1x slot, three PCI slots - thats a lot of cards you can stuff in there - six SATA2 ports, IDE port, up to three FireWire ports, up to twelve USB 2.0 ports and a lot of audio jacks makes for happy customers.

As you can see, the main heatsink / heatblock for the NorthBridge is water cooling ready - so if you feel the need, you can water cool it. You also get a nify vertical copper heatpipe heatsink you can attach to the NorthBridge cooler; however if you use it, you lose the PCIe 1x slot. Frankly, I think its overkill.

Here's a closeup of the processor socket and heat sinks/pipes:

And here we have the four DDR3 dimm sockets:

Note the debug LED's and power/reset switches by the six SATA ports:

Just look at all those slots and FireWire/USB headers!

The back panel features PS2 keyboard/mouse, optical & SP/DIFF connectors, CMOS clear switch, EIGHT USB 2.0 ports, dual Gigabit and six analog audio jacks. Whew.

Here is a look at the included optional-use heatpipe cooler for the Northbridge:

And before I forget, here is the stuff you get with the motherboard:

(You know, the regular stuff - manual, driver DVD, FireWire bracket, eSATA bracket, SATA cables etc.)