AOpen i915Pa-PLF Mainboard 

Manufacturer: AOpen
Supplied by: AOpen
Est. Street Price: $135

by Brian Tiller (2/15/2005)

Introduction

One of the best things about building your own system is the ability to upgrade as newer and better components as they become available. Sometimes that upgrade means a complete migration to a while new platform. When that happens, those of us without a budget the size of the national debt have to make a decision between performance and price. The new LGA775 platforms are just such an instance. Along with having to buy a new CPU, you also have to drop more bucks for a motherboard, VGA, and sometimes even memory, all of which can add up. Thankfully, quite a few manufacturers realize this and produce budget conscious components with decent performance. AOpen has provided us with their i915Pa-PLF motherboard which is a budget minded motherboard with several performance minded features. Let's take a look at the specs to see what we have to work with.

Specifications:

• CPU: Intel LGA775 Socket T

• Chipset: Northbridge - Intel 915P Alderwood
              Southbridge - Intel ICH6 

• Memory: Dual Channel DDR 333/400
              4 GB Max Capacity

• (1) ATA 100 Channel (2 Device capacity)
  (4) SATA Channels

• (1) FDC Channel

• (1) PCI-Express x16
  (2) PCI-Express x1
  (3) PCI slots

• Realtek ALC850 8-channel AC'97 2.3 CODEC

• Realtek RTL8110S-32 PCI Gigabit LAN

• Agere FW3226-100 Controller supports 2 FireWire (1394a) ports

• Phoenix Award BIOS

• AOpen Power Master

The last item, the AOpen Power Master, is one of the really slick features on this board. By selecting this in the BIOS, the board will automatically overclock the FSB and CPU depending on the load it is under. It will also control the fan speed and therefore the airflow and noise level.  

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