Overclocker Cafe - AOpen i915Pa-PLF Mainboard

AOpen i915Pa-PLF Mainboard

Included Items

In an obvious effort to keep the price down, the bundle with the motherboard was rather slim. The package included the requisite IDE and FDD cables as well as the rear I/O plate. While supporting four SATA channels, there is only a single SATA cable and power adapter included.

One of the two CD's included was Norton's Anti-Virus 2004 while the other contains the AOpen Bonus Pack. In addition to the motherboard drivers, the bonus pack contains the online manual, Pro Magic 6, AOConfig as well as a few other nice features. However, the one thing that disappointed me was the fact that though AOpen has included FireWire support on this board, there was no included bracket. So unless your case has a built in FireWire power, you will have to produce your own bracket in order to use the onboard FireWire.

Board Layout and Features

The i915Pa-PLF is a bit smaller than normal motherboards. While it isn't a Micro-ATX motherboard, AOpen did cut down the size of the board, reducing the width to 201mm from the 245mm width of a standard sized ATX board.

And as you can see, we do have a multitude of colors backed by a black PCB which gives the board a nice look to it.

The four DIMM slots are at the far edge of the board. Two of these, DIMMs 1 and 3, are blue while DIMMs 2 and 4 are a light purple in color making it easy for Dual Channel installation.

Just behind the DIMMs is the Northbridge, which is covered by a large passive heatsink.

Also located behind the DIMMs and above the Northbridge, is the CPU socket. As most of you know, with the LGA775 CPU all of the pins are on the motherboard. So it's only prudent to cover the socket to prevent damage.

Surrounding the CPU socket are several small capacitors, but just above it are three larger ones. These might interfere with the use of a larger aftermarket heatsink.

The drive connectors are all located at the bottom half of the board, surrounding the Southbridge. The blue one at the edge of the board is the IDE channel, with the FDD channel being below the four SATA ports.

As you can see, the Southbridge is not cooled. While a passive cooler would enhance the looks of the motherboard, the Southbridge chip never really gets hot enough to need it.

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