This motherboard has only two memory sockets, supporting up to 2 GB in dual channel mode – so you will get a better performance if you install two memory modules instead of just one –, accepting DDR2-400, DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 memories. It has an on-board Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by Intel 82573L chip. It has on-board video, controlled by the chipset (Intel 945GT). It also has one ATA-133 port and two SATA-150 ports supporting RAID 0 and 1.
Its two Firewire ports are controlled by Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A chip, one being soldered directly on the motherboard and the other accessed by the use of an I/O bracket. It also has six USB 2.0 ports, four soldered directly on the motherboard and two available thru I/O brackets.
What is also interesting about this motherboard is that it comes with an Abit-designed CPU cooler. We would like to make it clear once again that besides this motherboard is based on the “old” socket 478, it is targeted to the newer Core Duo and Core 2 Duo (mobile version) CPUs, which are based on socket 478.
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Figure 6: CPU socket.
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Figure 7: CPU cooler that comes with this motherboard.
As you may observed from the previous pictures, the chipset is cooled down by passive heatsinks – as Abit is concerned with noise level, no fan was used. The fine touch was the use of a passive heatink on top of the MOSFET transistors of the voltage regulator circuit, as you can see on Figure 8.
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Figure 8: Passive heatsink used on the MOSFET transistors from the voltage regulator.
