Board examination
We start with the nekkid bits, as always.
It's not the only board on which it's visible, but an interesting thing to note is the path of the tracks to the CPU socket. The DIMMs interface directly with the CPU; there's no link between them and the northbridge. This is because of the Athlon 64 AM2's onboard DDR2 memory controller, but you knew that already.
Along the bottom of the board, in the middle, you can see the ATX and single IDE connectors, which are both well situated.
And here are said DIMM slots up close. They're along the edge of the motherboard closest the PSU in what we'd call a standard ATX chassis. It doesn't look to us like there'll be any obstructions; the greatest threat to installation is a combination of big-arse CPU cooler and bulky memory like Corsair Xpert or PRO.
Just to the right of the DIMMs (out of shot) are two fan headers, one a 4-pin variant for the CPU HSF. Two more headers reside elsewhere on the board.
The floppy connector isn't in the best of places, but this reviewer doesn't use one any more, so doesn't really mind. That said, many still like to have one, just in case.
SB600 fuels four internal SATA ports. It would be nice to see a couple more SATA ports, with only one IDE connector present, though for the majority, four remains ample. The SATA ports remain accessible even with two high-end dual-slot graphics cards installed.
There are six expansion slots: a pair of 16x PEG, a duo of PCI and (checks thesaurus) two 1x PCIe slots. With dual-slot graphics cards installed, one PCIe and one PCI slot remain useable.
