The Basics:
We'll work our way around the board to take a close look at all of the features, but an overview of the
ECS GF7100PVT-M is provided in the image below. We have the typical ECS purple PCB with a variety of color coded connectors, and a single passively cooled chipset just south of the CPU socket.
The back panel connections are shown in the below left image, and from left to right we have PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, a serial port, VGA and DVI connections, four USB 2.0 ports, a LAN port, and the audio connections which include support for 8-channel analog speakers, a microphone, and a line-in. There is a big blank area where you might expect a parallel port, and while one isn't provided there is a header elsewhere on the motherboard. In order to get HDMI video output, an adapter is included that connects to the DVI port.
The above right image takes a look at the board in the area around the CPU socket. There are no large components and even the chipset cooler is rather low profile, so compatibility with most CPU coolers should not be a problem. The two fan headers are found here as well, with a 4-pin header near the CPU socket, and a 3-pin header right up against the 4-pin 12V connector near the back of the motherboard.
Next we have two orange DDR2 slots, which should be far enough away from the CPU socket to eliminate any interference issues. Along the edge of the board in this area we also find a floppy connection, 20/24-pin power connection, and an IDE connection.
At the bottom of the board we find one x16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI Express slot, and two PCI slots. I would prefer that the x1 PCI Express slot be moved down in order to make it available even if an oversized graphics card was installed in the x16 slot. Other features in this area include the front panel connections, four SATA 3Gbps connections, internal HD audio header, and three USB headers. One thing you will not find is Firewire, although there are blank spots on the PCB where you would expect to find the chipset and the header.
