ABIT AW8-MAX & Gigabyte GA-81955X

An absolutely feature packed board with every base covered - including extra SATA ports and extra IDE ports that support CD drives. Instead of the two IDE channels supported in the ICH7R southbridge, you now have support for up to six IDE devices, along with Firewire 400MBit and 800MBit, two Gigabit Ethernet controllers and Intel HD Audio with Dolby Master Studio.

The SATA ports and cables provided also contain a simple clip locking mechanism, which not only makes them ultra secure but also almost impossible to remove accidentally. This feature will be welcome to those who have also experienced SATA cables dropped out from their sockets on the hard disk or motherboard (like I have recently) because of poor cable design or worn cable joints. Also, the USB2.0 and Firewire board pin outs are uniquely keyed so you don’t have to fuss about when the board is in your case trying to find the right way around to plug in.

All the components are as well laid out as any other board with the important connectors around the edge for minimal cable interference, and colour co-ordinated depicting what is what and what it’s connected to; i.e. the Intel IDE port is red, whilst the GigaRAID IDE ports are green, so you know the difference. The front panel pins are also colour coded which is helpful, and whilst there is no overall colour scheme the blue PCB seems to go well with the range of colours used - it doesn’t look too childish and still clearly helps users know what goes where.

The chipsets are passively cooled, which is a bonus for us quiet computing enthusiasts, but you also get the option to use a 40mm fan with the northbridge if you want to overclock hard and require the extra cooling. Not only that, but the blue 40mm LED fan is interchangeable with any other of the same size (40x40x10) - we could easily change it for a 40mm ultra low noise ADDA that are often used for replacing Shuttle PSU fans. Not that you’d really need to change the fan however, since the one provided is quite quiet already.

The northbridge heatsink is large enough to not need a fan in most circumstances, but if your case has extremely poor air circulation or you are intending on pushing hard it’s best to use it. During our testing neither northbridge nor southbridge heatsink became too hot to touch.