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Board Layout
**click to enlarge**
The
board comes in an aesthetically pleasing black PCB. Gone, is
the traditional Northbridge/Southbridge chipset design as the nForce 3 150 is
a single chip solution.
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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
There
are three DIMM slots supporting up to 3GB of DDR 266/333/400. The ATX
power connector is nicely located on the far right corner of the board.
The auxiliary power connector is located near the row of capacitors above the
CPU socket area. You'll also find the two available IDE connectors
located on front of the memory slots.
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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
To
the left, you'll find your floppy connector as well as your two SATA
connectors with RAID capability. I would like to point out that although
the specs claim there are three independent IDE channels (6 Devices), the
third is clearly missing. I'm assuming a higher end model supports this
feature. The green connector includes your two pin headers for an
additional 2 USB ports. Unfortunately, that is all it offers and there
is no Firewire support or additional USB pin headers on the board.
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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
The
nForce 3 150 is passively cooled with a standard sized aluminum heatsink.
There is plenty of room around the socket area. There is a row of
capacitors located on one side but should provide ample room to install a
larger sink if desired. Like most other Soyo motherboards, the mounting
bracket is held in place using screws rather than those plastic push pins.
This makes it easier to remove and install another heatsink and prevents damage
to the bracket itself when attempting to remove it.
**click to enlarge**
The rear I/O panel features a total of four USB 2.0 ports, one 10/100 Ethernet
LAN port and basic audio connectors with your output, line in and mic jacks.
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