A Better Look at Things pg4

And another page… More to see, lots to see… Moving back over to the opposite side of the board, in the corer is located the CD-in connector, the audio connection is next to that.

Twisting around the board we can get a better look at the Phoenix BIOS chip, above the Phoenix BIOS chip is a jumper that is for protecting the BIOS, you can change it so you are not able to flash the BIOS, it is essentially BIOS virus protection. Next to the Phoenix BIOS chip is the ITE chip, or Super I/O controller, that controls most commonly used functions, such as keyboard, floppy, parallel etc. To the left of that is the audio Codec chip, it is an ALC850 chip that supports AC97 v2.3 and 8 channel audio.

The main part of the board, I feel, is the expansion slots, there are two PCIE slots running at x8. The

red slot is the main PCIE slot or single, the blue can be used for another PCIE card or for an SLI setup., between the PCIE slots is a single PCIE x1 slot. ECS also included three standard PCI slots, but these are also the PCI 2.3 standard.

Lastly, but certainly not least is the back I/O panel, here we find the standard connections that most motherboard have. Stating at the right, mouse, keyboard, parallel port, serial port, and coaxial port. Then comes the RJ-45, Giga Lan connector, under and next to that are four USB ports. The audio connectors are color coded, orange is center/bass, blue is line in, green is front out, black is back surround, gray is side surround and pink is the microphone.

This board is very nicely laid out, there is a lot of room to make your connections, and to work with. I really like the purple color of the board, some may not, but it seems everything stands out better.