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Quality & Setup Continued... |
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Very Nice... |
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The AE25R comes equipped with 6
PCI and 1 AGP slot, which gives the user plenty of room for
expansion. Variations of the AE25R motherboard may come with an
optional CNR slot. The on-board audio comes
with both CD-IN and Auxiliary-IN connectors as well as a
Bass/Center-Out connector for sub-woofer/center channel
speakers.
The CPU, IDE and RAM sockets are
all positioned in a manner that do not interfere with each
other. I was particularly happy to see that there was
ample room between the AGP slot and DIMM sockets so that the
RAM can be added or changed without having to remove the
video card. Since this is an overclocking board, we were
pleased to see that the north bridge comes equipped with a
heat sink, even though it was attached with thermal tape.
Although we are not the biggest fans of thermal epoxy, it
would be recommended that the thermal tape be replaced with
it as long as it is made by a reputable company, like Arctic
Silver. This would help in effectively conducting the
heat away from the chip, which is especially important when
overclocking.
The BIOS
The AE25R comes with the Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG.
We found that the Award BIOS on this board to come with a
wide variety of settings to assist users in getting their
system successfully overclocked. Although this isn't
the most options we've seen in a BIOS, there is a sufficient
amount available to help adjust and perfect a system while
overclocking.
In particular, there is an
excellent selection of voltage adjustments available the
allows for the setting of the CPU Core and Chipset Core
Voltages. If you are a first timer and are concerned
about over-heating your processor, the Health Monitor comes
with a Shutdown Temperature setting that will turn off the
machine if the temperature exceeds the setting.
Now that we've had a glimpse of
the brains behind the brawn, let's get the show started by
running some numbers...
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