BIOS
A quick look at the BIOS to see if we enthusiasts can tinker about with the settings.
As you may expect considering the market that the Hermes is aimed at, we have very little scope to adjust performance-enhancing parameters. The motherboard plays it by the book. It only offers the choice of DDR200 or DDR266 memory speeds.
DDR latency timings can make a reasonable difference, even if we are limited to only DDR266 speeds. The usual 4 latency parameters are present. Informal benchmarking showed a reasonable gain in bandwidth performance if low latencies were applied. You'll no doubt notice the lack of voltage adjustment available. That's pretty sensible.
You wouldn't expect features to be toggled by jumpers these days.
It's hard to believe that a 2.4GHz Northwood B processor is being kept at only 44c. A closed case, little airflow, and a small heatsink have their job cut out with faster, wattage-eating processors. The dead CPU fan header is the simple explanation for the CPU fan's 0 RPM reading.
A simple, easy-to-use BIOS seems to fit the Hermes well. If you like pushing your components to the limits, you had better look elsewhere.
