Board Layout

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


There could be a little bit more space around the CPU socket area. While it is absolutely fine according to Intel's spec, installing the huge Thermaltake Golden Orb 2 did not leave us with much space between chipset and CPU heatsink, but it did fit.


The IO backpanel is completely standard. From left to right you have PS/2 mouse and keyboard, serial port, parallel port, SPDIF, audio, Firewire, 4x USB and Gigabit Ethernet.


It has become good-practice to color-code the memory slots to indicate dual-channel configuration. Putting both memory modules in slots of the same color enables dual-channel.


If your PC does not want to boot up, the POST LED indicator is a very useful tool to locate and fix the problem. During startup, hexadecimal numbers are displayed that show the current activity, if your system hangs now, look up the POST code in the well-written manual and you're one step closer to fixing your PC.

Connectors

Both ATX power connectors are placed in a good location. Putting the ATX12V connector further to the left (in the image) would have sure helped avoid cable length issues with some cases or PSUs.


Intel's four SATA ports are located where you would expect them, near the southbridge of the motherboard. The additional two SATA ports which are provided by a Silicon Image SATA controller are located between chipset, CPU socket and IO back panel. Quite uncommon, but the only issue I see with that is that cables can not be organized as nicely.


You can connect up to two IDE devices on the AL8's only PATA port.


Color-coded headers, with proper labels on the board, make first time installation very easy.

Slots

The board offers one PCI-E x16 slot for the video card, three PCI-E x1 slots and two PCI slots. It's about time we see more PCI-E x1 cards from manufacturers.