955X7AA Motherboard Layout continued

Instead of the large passive headsink found on the Intel reference board, Foxconn decided to go with a smaller actively cooled one. The noise wasn't much of a factor with this fan, but less moving parts would have been nice. To the top right tucked behind a capacitor, you can see the 4-pin power controller. Not the best place to put it, but it wasn't too bad either as one could easily tuck that cable out of the way.

Finally, we have the back panel of the motherboard. The onboard sound on this motherboard is powered by a Realtek chip and has support for 7.1 high definition sound.  The inclusion of two types of digital outputs was nice, but I was a little disappointed by the lack of a firewire port. That functionality was instead provided by a PCI bracket included with the motherboard.

Speaking of accessories, Foxconn definitely gave you everything you need to build up this sytem. Eight Sata cables, four sata power cables, a firewire bracket, a USB bracket, two rounded IDE cables and a rounded floppy cable. It doesn't cost very much to add these things to a motherboard package, but it makes it that much nicer.  I couldn't fit it into this picture, but there was also a backplate, a driver CD and two floppies with raid drivers.

Let's look at its siblings...

Next Page: (945P7AA Layout)

Page 1: Introduction Page 2: 955X7AA Motherboard Layout Page 3: 955X7AA Motherboard Layout (continued) Page 4: 945P7AA Layout Page 5: 945P7AA layout continued Page 6: 945G7MA-8EKRS2 Layout Page 7: 945G7MA-8EKRS2 layout continued; BIOS Page 8: BIOS Continued; Test Setup Page 9: Memory Performance Page 10: CineBench Rendering; Worldbench tests Page 11: Gaming Performance Page 12: Ethernet; USB2.0; FireWire Page 13: Audio Quality & Performance Page 14: Conclusion