Board Layout

Click here for a 3000x2500 high-res shot of the board (3 MB download), the back is here.


The CPU cooler is rotated by 90° compared to most other motherboards. While the space is fine for most coolers, big coolers may have problems fitting with the chipset and capacitors around. Our favourite cooler that violates all specifications, the Zalman CNPS8000 does not fit here because its heatpipes make contact with the capacitors and chipset heatsink.


Aside from the standard connectors like PS/2 mouse and keyboard, parallel port, 4x USB, Gigabit Ethernet and Audio you find an analog output connector and *drumroll* an HDMI port. This is a much better solution than the ASUS board which has the HDMI connector on an extra PCB (Sapphire has the DVI on an extra PCB). In my opinion this makes a lot more sense since one of the main selling points of this board is HDMI. If you want DVI for a regular PC you will have no problems installing a fairly tall add-in card - for small form factor HTPCs this does matter though.


The motherboard's memory slots have been color coded for easy dual-channel configuration. To run your memory in dual-channel mode, you have to put the modules into slots of the same color, the sticker on the slots makes absolutely sure you are aware of this.

Connectors

The power connectors are around the standard spots. The CPU power connector is a bit close to the socket and could have been moved one or two cm out.


Four SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports are provided by the AMD RS690 chipset.


A single IDE port is good for CD/DVD-ROM use. I find this is a good move on AMD side to keep support for one IDE port. Intel has scrapped them on their newer chipsets which forces motherboard manufacturers to put an additional IDE chip on the motherboard because most people today are still using IDE optical drives.


The headers are plain, color-coding was probably left out to save some money. They are located in a slightly different spot than on most motherboards, yet are easy to recognize and well labeled.


On the ASUS RS690 board I didn't complain about only three fan connectors, but two fan connectors is the absolute minimum you would want on any motherboard.