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K7NCR18G Pro
Left to right, top to bottom as usual. The first thing we come across is the power regulation hardware in the standard place in the top left. The placement of components means that the main ATX connector is pushed below this main cluster of regulating hardware and is oriented vertically. Not entirely ideal, depending on your case layout, but it's not that bad a placement for me. However it logically means that you'll be dragging the power cable over the socket area in a great many cases so this could cause issue. The area around the CPU socket is generous, generous enough for a Swiftech MCX462 to fit with the Socket 478 Pro brackets attached (I can't find my allen keys!). So if that can fit, I think you'll find most heatsinks will. Of course, use of the MCX Swiftech means that the board has the four mounting holes.
Carrying on past the CPU socket and we hit the 3 DIMM slots, colour coded so you know what slots to populate if you are going for a TwinBank setup and dual channel operation.
Below the CPU socket we have the rotated IGP northbridge cooled with a substantial heatsink topped by a nice and quiet 40mm fan. More than enough to keep the IGP cool.
From IGP down we hit a very standard layout as usual. AGP3.0 slot, 4 PCI and the ACR slot for the FireWire card make up the majority of the remaining layout with the IDE and floppy ports taking up position on the right hand edge of the board in the preferred vertical layout. I'm looking forward to the day when Serial ATA drives proliferate and the clumsy IDE connector can be made a thing of the past on modern boards.
The case headers and headers for things like USB are all well labelled and I didn't need to rely on the manual to hook up my case.
Overall a clean layout with only the ATX connector placement spoiling things, thumbs up to Leadtek here. Onto the BIOS after a quick look at the backplane layout.
ATX backplane layout
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