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Date |
: Apr 24th, 2002 |
| Category |
: Motherboards |
| Manufacturer |
: AOpen |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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As with all other AOpen motherboards in recent years, the highlights of the AX4B Pro are its packaging, black PCB and hefty size of 12" x 9.5" (HxW). Heeding the hordes of case modders out there, the packaging has a cutout "window", giving a peek at the contents within. The motherboard, cables, documentation and CDs are all encased in a plastic clamshell case with an emblazoned AOpen logo, clearly showing AOpen's intentions to bring attention to their product.
The AX4B Pro is yet another hefty package of electronics from AOpen, which may cause some amount of grief (usually it's removing all 5.25" devices) for end-users with small cases. Component placement is a little deficient this time around, with the main complaint being the placement of the IDE and floppy headers. This arrangement prevents the first 3 PCI slots from accommodating full-length PCI cards. While arguably non-critical for the majority of end users, it would certainly bother those of us with larger cards such as caching RAID controllers.
The DIMM slots are about half an inch above the AGP slot, making DIMM installation/removal a non-issue. On some motherboards such as the ASUS TUA266, it is necessary to first remove the AGP card before installing / removing DIMMs.
AOpen again decided to integrate only 2 USB ports, including an additional header on the board as well as a bracket to provide another 2 USB ports. The second USB header is placed towards the lower-front end of the motherboard to cater to cases having front USB connectors, such as the SkyHawk aluminum line. Standard issue design - the front panel connectors are placed in the lower-left corner of the motherboard, ensuring that the cables do not get in the way of any expansion slots.
It seems with the Socket-478 platform, capacitor placement virtually becomes a non-issue. Even with an entire row of 2200uF capacitors barely half an inch from the mount zone, heatsink/fan units such as the newly released Zalman CNPS5600B have no trouble fitting in.
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