Overclocker Cafe - AOpen i915Pa-PLF Mainboard

AOpen i915Pa-PLF Mainboard

Board Layout and Features (cont.)

Just to the side of the Southbridge is the Phoenix Award BIOS chip as well as the Agere FW3226-100 controller which is supporting the 1394A FireWire.

Being an Alderwood based board, the graphics slot is PCI-Express x16, but there are also two PCI-Express x1 slots.

Due to the motherboard's decreased width, AOpen had to move the ATX power connector to the middle of the board, directly above the PCI-Express slot and behind the Northbridge heatsink.

They also crammed several of the system fan connections here as well. This location is going to cause problems on several levels. The first just being the installation of the connections. Being in such tight quarters caused me a bit of a headache. The more important problem will be airflow. The ATX power cable will almost have to be routed directly above the CPU heatsink blocking a bit of the airflow, and if you are using a larger after market sink, even more problems could surface.

Both the onboard audio and LAN are provided by Realtek.

The rear I/O panel is pretty standard. There are four USB ports, the 8 channel onboard audio and the single Gb LAN port.

There is one thing about this motherboard that through us for a loop. At the very bottom, just below all the PCI slots is a single 23-pin mini connector labeled "Black Jack". It is about half the size of the FDD connector.

As to what this is for, I haven't a clue. I have been unable to find any information on it. I'm sure that once AOpen ships the boards out for sale, the finalized included manual will include this in it.

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