this is one sweet ass looking board. black pcb with the
platinum plates and heatsink really draws attention. congrat's Aopen for a
killer job. There is hope in a world where you get a killer looking board, and
the hardworking guys that built it get direct credit for it. Tell me, how many
times do you see that! None of the other companies are giving props to their
dedicated employees like that. Some of you old equipment using freaks will not
care too much for the lack of ISA slots, but for some of us it is a blessing.
Those damned shared slots always played with the PCI device above it anyway's. At
least my stuff had a fit dependant upon which device was in the shared slot. I
have to say that I appreciate the all PCI board, gives me more room to add in
all my PCI devices without worrying about shared slots and
whatnot.
Specs
CPU Support Slot -1 Chipset
Intel i440 BX Memory 3 168-Pin DIMMs, Max Mem 768 MB L2
Cache On-Chip (512K) Form Factor ATX Expansion Slots 1
AGP, 6 PCI Bus Speeds Supported A Lot Multipliers
Supported 2x-8x BIOS Award
It comes with the same
thoughtful layout as the other Aopen offerings. Enough room to slap a monster
sink on your Slocket 370, or PII / PIII type chips without eating all the mem
slots. Drive cable placement isn't bad, and the ATX connector is out of the way
too. Only two fan connectors on the PCB, so that means the old 4pin drive style
for any other cooling you might desire. No big loss there, only means that you
can monitor just 2 of your sweetest 3 pin fans. The board comes with the usual
Aopen flare, a cd with goodies like Norton Antivirus, some Aopen monitoring
utilities, and a few drivers for you behind the times Win95 freaks. Installation
is simple, settings in the BIOS get you up and running in no time and the
colored fold out instruction sheet is straight to the point and simple. There
really is no need for a book type manual with this board, as most of the
settings are controlled via CMOS, and if you don't know what you are doing in
there you don't need this board.
One thing Aopen let loose with on this
version of the AX6BC is the voltage selection in the BIOS. None of this .1 and
.2 voltage tweaks and that's all folks crap. You get full range with no hassles,
except for the warning message that pops up when you change the voltage either
way. I thought that was kinda cool the first time I saw it, just a heads up from
our buds saying if you jack the vcore too much we aren't responsible for your
dumb ass. The rest of the settings are the usual flav's
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