AOpen AX4B Max P4 Mainboard

Layout and Explanation

 

AOpen has done a good job of keeping all your power connectors and IDE cables grouped to the lower right of the DIMM slots.  This keeps your cables out of the way that not only is tidy but helps airflow in your case be as efficient as possible.  The only exception to this is the 4-pin 12V ATX power connector that is nestled left of the capacitors to the left of the CPU socket.  Which is no big deal.

 

Six PCI slots, one AGP, and one CNR slot provide plenty of expansion room.  Can anyone really fill up six PCI slots anymore?  (Old Voodoo2 SLI mode users being the exception.)  Four DIMM slots are present, capable of supporting DDR266 up to a gig stick per bank.  Three fan headers are also strategically placed.

The bright passive aluminum chipset heatsink is back.  The i845 doesn't make a truck load of heat so the oversized aluminum passive sink should do fine.  Underneath you can see the thermal pad interface between the sink and the i845 chipset.  To keep things "stock" for our tests, we removed this pad and placed a fresh piece of TIM down.  (Even though it killed us to do so!)

     

The what seems to be standard AGP card retention clip is here.  As I have said before, you bang your box around that this clip makes the difference between your card falling out or not; you will be having much larger things to worry about than a loose AGP card.  One positive use for me at least, is that if any of you use an open rack type set up to run a box on like a Senfu Workstation, this clip will keep you from sweating a video cable pulling your card out of the slot.

You Firewire folks will be happy to see this.  Two Firewire jacks are ready for you.  Included in the extras as we already mentioned is a Firewire port bracket. 

  

 

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