Thursday, October 17, 2002

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 too close to the AGP port, thus introducing the chance of a retention bar coming into contact with the graphics card when installing memory.

Three 1200mfds and seven 1500mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket.

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

The Northbridge is capped with a heatsink, but not a fan.

The ATX connector is located close to the IDE connectors, to the East of the CPU socket. The power cables are thus sufficiently far from the CPU that they shouldn't interfere with ventilation. The 12V connector, for its part, is located to the South-West of the CPU.

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

Hardware monitoring is controlled by an ITE IT8708F circuit.

This board permits the manual assignment of IRQs.

USB 2.0 (480Mbps), and "Firewire"/IEEE-1394 ports are included, thanks to a VIA V6307 chip.

A Broadcom BCM5702 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet network controller is available as an option.

A Promise PDC20376 two-port Serial ATA Raid controller is available as an option.

Several great Overclocking features are integrated into the BIOS, including the ability to adjust the FSB frequency, and the Vcore, DDR, and AGP voltages.

CPU Parameter Recall (C.P.R.) technology is included, which allows the system to be reset to its previous settings, if it fails to respond after an attempt at Overclocking.

This board includes "Q-Fan" technology, which allows the speed of the CPU-fan to be adjusted in response to changes in the temperature of the processor.

"AGP Warning LED" technology is included, which detects if an unsupported 3.3v AGP 2X graphics card has been installed. If such is the case, the system will refuse to boot, in order to avoid damage to the motherboard.

Asus C.O.P., and Asus Post Reporter technologies are included, which protect the CPU from overheating, and vocally alert the users of any troubles encountered at start-up.

A new feature, called "CrashFree BIOS" is included, and allows users to save BIOS data to a simple diskette, thus allowing the BIOS to be restored if it is corrupted.

Next: Additional features.

Asus P4PE