The Basics:

Taking a look at the motherboard from above, I immediately noticed that there are no PATA connections! While this is a change, it may not be a big surprise, as PATA has been moving out in favor of the faster Serial ATA connections. You are going to need a SATA optical drive if you want one installed internally, and once that is connected there is only room for three hard drives (which may be more than enough for many people, but I'd prefer more).


Due to the blanks on the motherboard's PCB, it appears that it could physically support two additional SATA connections, but this south bridge chipset can only handle four anyway. And as mentioned, there is no support for any form of RAID. Although there are no DDR3 slots, I was happy to see four DDR2 memory slots, as often times manufacturers only provide two slots on mATX motherboards.


The second thing I noticed was the lack of active cooling on the north bridge or south bridge chips. Each of these chips has a passive head sink on it, and the south bridge chip has a very small heatsink that looks like a sticker, and makes me wonder whether it will even be sufficient. Along the left edge of the motherboard are four USB headers which would allow up to eight USB 2.0 connections to be made. On the bottom left corner is the standard front panel switch/LED header; you better have the manual handy as there are no markings on the motherboard to help with making the connections.


Taking a quick look at the CPU socket, I found there to be a large amount of space around it, which should allow you to install most coolers. The north bridge cooler and RAM sockets could pose an issue with the extremely large coolers out there, but they are usually configured to provide enough clearance over features such as these. There are two fan headers on this motherboard, one is used for the CPU and the other can be used for an intake or exhaust fan. An exhaust fan might make the most sense, as the header will be near the back of the case once installed. I do not care for the placement of this fan header, as it is behind the 4-pin auxillary power connector and underneath the CPU cooler, making it difficult to access once a system is installed.