Layout
Click for a bigger version (900x987, 181.1KB).
Our usual look at the layout. The first thing we hit, working our way from the top left to the top right, is the bank of 1500µF Sanyo capacitors, used for smoothing power delivery to the processor and other board components. It's a three-phase system with Fairchild FET devices doing the field effect transisting
One thing to watch out for with the PX875P is the closeness of the capacitors to the top edge of the bracket. This image shows you how close they get to an oversized heatsink that doesn't use the retention bracket. There are also a couple of heatsinks that do use the bracket, that will still foul on the caps, so do your homework. The heatsink in the shot is a Swiftech MCX478.
Past the CPU area, we come across the auxiliary power connector for extra 12V supply to the CPU, just before the bank of DIMM slots. Being a Canterwood board, dual-channel memory is standard, therefore we have the obligatory four slots for filling the pair of memory controllers. Layout also pushes the slot end tabs far enough away from the AGP slot area, such that changing your DIMM configuration can be done without removing your AGP card.
The DIMM slots are colour coded, green or purple slots are to be used in tandem for dual-channel running. The pair of purple slots were used throughout testing. Past the memory slots you'll find the IDE ports and the main ATX power header.
The northbridge heatsink marks the north-south board divide.
It's pleasingly large, although I'm not sure about the bling colour against the blue PCB. It's not my aesthetic cup of tea, but it's fanless, something to smile about. It purports to be enough to cool the bridge at 300MHz front side bus frequency too. We'll see.
Dropping down into the bottom half of the board, there's nothing untoward that we have to be aware of; it's standard Intel P4 territory there. The AGP retention mechanism is the same smart design that I first came across on their K8X800 Pro II board, thumbs up for its appearance here too.
We've got the 3C920 to the left of the first couple of PCI slots, themselves white in colour to add to the blind man's colour scheme. Sat in the space on the right of the slots is the uncooled ICH5 bridge. The lone pair of stacked SATA ports sits nearby with a horribly oriented (east-west) floppy port near the bottom right. Grr, stick it north-south and against the far right edge of the board next time please, there's plenty of room for it.
The case header pins are well labelled, allowing you to get the board up and running without referencing the manual. They could be colour coded for even better ease of use, but it's decent in the shipping form.
Erm, what's going on there is anyone's guess. Two serial, game port and space-wasting orientation for the sound port cluster. Very Year 2000. Albatron missed the boat here by a long chalk. There's I/O port space for two more USB2.0 ports, S/PDIF output at the very least.
Layout Summary
Not a bad layout at all. My only niggle is the unused PCB space on the right which should contain the floppy port at the very least, to move it out of the poor position it resides in. SATA ports in that space would have been nice too, as close to the right board edge is optimal, for cable length reasons.Both power connectors stay out of the way of the CPU area, a pleasing statement to make. It could be better overall, but there's not much wrong with it. Just forget about the retarded I/O port cluster.
BIOS next.
