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Foxconn C51XEM2AA AM2 SLI Mainboard Layout/Features Gone is the orange PCB we are used to seeing with Foxconn boards. The C51XEM2AA comes on a jet black PCB base and an NVidia green chipset fan assembly that looks like it’s right off the reference design of an NVidia VGA card.
Beginning with the AMD socket AM2 area, we find a similar lug type cooler mount as on socket 939 boards. So similar in fact that many 939 coolers will fit the socket AM2 assembly. The capacitors and passive cooled SPP are spaced far enough away that we don’t see any problems with heatsink compatibility. The same cannot be said for the space between the socket and the DIMM slots. As we noted in our review of the Thermaltake Mini Typhoon cooler, the heatpipes of that cooler intruded into the DIMM 1 space enough to make it unusable. This cannot be completely attributed to Foxconn’s layout but the end user needs to be aware that some oversized or odd shaped sinks will have trouble with DIMM 1 on this product. One last tourist spot is the CPU fan connector. Check out the 4-pin power connector. Don’t sweat it, it will work fine with a 3-pin cable too.
Shifting over a bit we get a view of the top half of the DIMM side of the C51XEM2AA. The four DIMM slots are DDR2 as we mentioned, supporting DDR2 533/667/800 memory up to a two gig stick per DIMM. The 24-pin ATX power connector and lone ATA133 connector are lined against the edge of the board keeping cable routing clean and simple. A single ATA133 channel is rapidly becoming the norm with the shift to SATA being universally inevitable.
The lower half of the DIMM side of the board has a lot more points of interest. The first is of course the nForce 590 chipset fan. Constructed out of copper with a green fan and outer sticker grab your attention like not much else. It's not often you will catch yourself admiring a chipset cooler. This however, is one of those times. Also present here but only less notable visually, are the six SATA II ports, two USB headers, COM port header (not on the rear I/O), floppy drive connector and two 3-pin fan headers (one in use by chipset cooler.)
Just below the chipset cooler is a small two digit display for showing error codes. This display shows a two digit code whose displays is defined in the manual. Say you machine won't boot up and you have no clue what's wrong. With this, you get a reasonably large helping hand from the display. Say you get a code of 'C1'. In looking this code up, we see that it is referencing the memory. Trouble shooting doesn't get much easier than this.
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