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There are five PCI slots, one 8x AGP port and one
ACR slot. The latter is for the included FireWire
card. However, since you cannot use the first PCI
slot while the AGP port is occupied (or at least it
is a bad idea), you are left with 'only' four available
PCI slots. This is a rather interesting realization
when you look at the board and see all of those yellow
slots
The standard battery of I/O options
is present in the rear. Theres 2 USB 2.0, PS/2 connectors,
Printer, game and serial ports. There's even 4CH sound,
expandable to 6CH with a special backplate (included)
There seems to be plenty of clearance around the
CPU socket. Just be very careful of these resistors
if you are using a 3 lug cooler like the Volcano 7+.
It would be tragic to knock that off. Although I must
add that Chaintech has made a few revs to this board
and I wouldn't be surprised to see future builds lacking
this issue
This board sports the MCP-T version of the nForce2
chipset, meaning that it was designed with multimedia
performance in mind. You'll notice that the northbridge
is rotated 45 degrees from the norm. I think this
simply reflects Chaintech's willingness to show their
independence from tradition and do what they think
is best. Besides, it looks damn cool through a case
window
The RAM slots are in a familiar place just to the
left of the CPU. Notice the gap between the first
two slots and the third? The third slot is used when
you are running a dual channel DDR configuration.
When there are modules in the proper slots, the board
alternates which module it writes to, effectively
increasing performance. We'll see just how much increase
we get in a few pages
One smaller detail that I love is the onboard speaker.
The less stuff to wire up the better, and with the
POST code display, the speaker is really for back-up
security anyway
There are three IDE headers; the first is for starting
your RAID configuration which remains empty if you
are not building a RAID array. What are left for conventional
IDE configurations are the standard two headers for
a total of four IDE drive possibilities unless you
go with SATA
The three onboard fan headers are pretty standard.
Any more really need to pull juice from the PSU anyway.
Before I get too much further into the review, I
need to provide you with the actual specs of this
board. However, since this is a page heavy review
already I think I'll link to Chaintechs website for
them. So if you want all of the numbers, click
here.
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