Overclocker Cafe - AOpen i945Ga-PHS DC Motherboard

AOpen i945Ga-PHS Dual Core Motherboard

One thing I love about AOpen motherboards is the way they color code their front panel connections. It makes my life so much easier since I'm constantly having to plug/unplug boards and components.

Let's take a quick look at the back panel before we go over the installation of this board. If the four USB ports here aren't enough for you, the motherboard has headers for to up to four more. Unfortunately they don't include these in with the package. However, we do have the FireWire, LAN and 7.1 channel sound that is quite nice. Not to mention the onboard video and S-Video plug as well. This is one of those features that just begs to be used in an HTPC.

Installation

Quite often I'll skip over comments about the installation of the motherboard because it usually goes of without a hitch. Unfortunately, we had a very large issue with this board during the installation. The user manual states

For i945Ga-PHS, the PCI Express x16 Graphics slot can automatically recognize a PCI Express x16 Graphics or a Multiplex Intel DVO Output depending on which cards being inserted.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way in real life. Just below the PCI-Express x16 slot are a series of jumpers that need to be removed in order to engage the PCI-Express graphics card.

While it's not that hard to remove the jumpers, there is nothing in the manual that addresses this. At first I had thought that we had a bum board but, after we contacted AOpen, they informed us of the jumper issue. While I don't exactly like the issue of jumpers, AOpen should at the least inform the end user via the manual.

BACK NEXT