The external case connectors
look like every other ATX compliant board. The
microphone jack, however, takes on multiple roles depending on how
the board is configured. It can act as a standard
microphone jack, a center channel or subwoofer out.
At first glance, the slot configuration looks ideal, but
pay close attention to that last slot...it looks like a
reversed PCI slot. That's an "ACR" or Audio /
Communication Riser slot (it's Asus' version of a CNR
slot). This isn't a feature many do-it-yourselfer's
are looking for, but it will probably help Asus land some
OEM wins. Considering the board has very good
C-Media CMI8738 audio on-board and RAID, 5 PCI slots and
an AGP Pro slot should be plenty. There is ample
room around the CPU socket to accommodate larger coolers,
but if your cooler has a large clip it may get in the way
of the first DIMM slot. We had about a millimeter of
space between the first DIMM slot and our cooler's
clip...which was a little too close for comfort. It
would be nice to see a little more space between the
socket and DIMM slots in a future revision.
While we're looking at the
socket, we should mention Asus C.O.P. (CPU Overheating
Protection) feature. The A7V266-E doesn't monitor
the internal diode found in the newer Athlon XPs, but it
will throttle your CPU speed or shut your system down if
the thermal probe under the socket reaches a certain
temperature. This feature should help in case the
fan on your cooler dies, but we weren't courageous enough
to thoroughly test this feature. We only had one
Athlon XP in the lab and weren't about to burn in up just
yet!
The secondary USB connector
plate was a bit different than the simple cables we're
used to seeing bundled with most other boards. In
the middle picture you can see some of the excellent
silkscreen tables that adorn the A7V266-E. This
board is also completely configurable using DIP switches.
The silk-screens make it nice and easy to set the switches
without having to dig out the User's manual. We also
removed the active cooling on the A7V266-E's Northbridge
and were again pleased to find Asus applied thermal paste
as well.
The case headers were all
clearly labeled, mounted at the bottom corner of the
board. Both the IDE and RAID connectors were also
well placed, parallel to the edge of the board just behind
the DIMM sockets, but the floppy header could have been
located better. It's mounted way down at the bottom
of the board between the 4th and 5th PCI slot. If
you plan on using the A7V266-E in a full tower case where
the floppy drive is mounted at the top, you'll need a
really long cable...
|
Soyo has the Goods
Too...
|