Ports and Features
6-pin Firewire 400, in addition to a Firewire 800 connector (between the two PS/2 ports and the first set of USB ports), as well as 6 USB 2.0 and 8-channel audio, provide enough rear I/O connectivity for most. Only the lack of coaxial S/PDIF digital output puts us off.
The NVIDIA-branded cooler for the MCP55 IC may look like something you'd find on an old 5- or 6-series GeForce card, but it does an acceptable job of cooling the bridge, and unless you have a lust for an exceptionally quiet system it's unlikely to be heard in operation. There is one downside to the cooler, however, and that's more to do with the placement of the MCP55 rather than the cooler that sits atop. When trying to remove any graphics card in the bottom PEG16X slot, it's extremely difficult to grab the slot release catch on the PEG slot, due to lack of clearance between it, the card installed and the MCP55 cooler.
Utilising the same kind of passive heatsink you'd expect to find adorning the rear of a high-end amplifier, in a sufficiently ventilated chassis the heatsink for the C51XE IC will easily tame its heat load.
