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The first thing you will notice
is the cool blue PCB. It's definitely a pretty board!
Although there are capacitors
all along side the CPU area, there's plenty of room for just about any
heatsink. We used the monster Alpha PAL8942 with no problem.
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**Northbridge** |
**Southbridge** |
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| Shuttle decided
to cool BOTH the Northbridge & Southbridge. Something you don't
typically see done. Board manufacturers usually just cool the
Northbridge with a heatsink or heatsink/fan combo. A nice touch I
think. |
The layout of the AS45GTR is
excellent. The ATX Power, Aux Power & ATX 12V connectors are nicely
located on one corner of the board away from all components to avoid cable
clutter. There are three DIMM slots supporting up to 3GB of DDR SDRAM.
The board officially supports PC1600, PC2100 or PC2700 and unofficial support
for PC3200 (DDR 440). Under the DIMM slots you'll find the Floppy & IDE
connectors.
On the other end you'll find the
Highpoint RAID Controller and RAID connectors. Notice the two small
black connectors next to them. These are the new Serial ATA/RAID
connectors. Small aren't they?
On the bottom of the pic above
you will find the USB & Firewire headers. To the left you'll notice two
yellow jumpers. Those are you jumpers for the Front Audio. Above
that is your CN7 header for the supplied center/bass audio cable.
Shuttle has added one very interesting feature.
The built-in Power & Reset buttons. Although some may not find this very
useful, I think it's great especially for technicians or anyone that is
troubleshooting hardware. It will allow you to Power On the PC without
the need to connect the board to the Case.
Finally, we look at the rear I/O panel which
includes your Audio connectors and two USB/USB 2.0 ports. |
