Thursday, December 20, 2001

Technical details

The standard amount of space has been provided around the CPU socket in order to fit a P4 heatsink.

The memory slots are located far enough from the AGP port that there is little chance of a retention bar coming into contact with the graphics card when installing memory.

Three 3300Mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket.

The voltage regulation circuits are of the triple phase, bi-Mosfets variety.

The primary ATX power connectors are located on the North-Eastern corner of the motherboard, while the 4-pin 12V connector is located nearby the Northbridge. As a result of this arrangement, the power cords shouldn't interfere with CPU ventilation.

The CPU retention bar is made of plastic, so handle with care.

Three fan connectors are included, all of which are controlled by the hardware monitoring system.

It's possible to manually assign IRQs.

The AGP port does not support AGP Pro graphics cards, but does come with a handy retention/ejection mechanism.

A Promise Technologies PDC20265R RAID controller is included.

An Intel 82562ET PCI network controller is also included.

In summation, the DFI NT70-SA and the Abit TH7-II RAID are practically identical. The only differences seem to be in the small refinements that Abit tends to offer with its boards (including the TH7-II RAID), such as an extra thermal sensor connector, a LED diagnostic panel, and service-interrupts placed directly on the board itself.

Next: Additional features