Stability Features

Gold heatsink?

Ok, now this feature was a little stranger to us. Upon opening up the box containing the motherboard, our eyes were immediately drawn not to the PC 99 compliant, pastel-colored backpanel I/O, but to a SHINY GOLD heatsink. That's right, the BX chipset itself is not covered by the normal anodized aluminum heatsink that we've seen on so many other motherboards. Instead, Aopen opted to go with a 24K gold plated heatsink. We don't know what the base material under the gold plating is, but can be pretty certain that anodized aluminum, the typical material, was used. Regardless, taking temperature measurements of the heatsink showed that it was indeed maintaining a comfortable temperature, even on overclocked configurations. Plus, it's shiny gold!

24K gold, baby!

Now we know what makes a good heatsink. A heatsink should be able to move heat quickly from one side (the CPU side) to the other side (the side that contacts air) in order to quickly dissipate heat. We also know that in theory, a pure silver heatsink should be the best choice. Copper radiates heat well, but is difficult to machine into intricate shapes. What purpose, then, would gold plating have in relation to heat sinks? Well, we know that gold is a good electrical conductor. This is evident in the use of gold-plated jacks for a lot of higher end audio equipment. Well, electrical conductivity is usually correlated with good heat conduction as well. Additionally, 24K gold gets hot pretty quickly when near a heat source, so we can expect that the thermal resistance theta is low. The surface that is actually in contact with air loses heat via radiation and convection. In theory, then, the gold plating would be effective if it were a better radiator of heat than aluminum. Our empirical evidence shows that Aopen's gold plated heatsink did in fact stay a bit (1 or 2) degrees cooler.

Fat capacitors!

Another one of the early things that we noticed during our initial, visual inspection of the motherboard were the huge-looking capacitors. Capacitors are the cylindrical things that are on your motherboard. The function of a capacitor is to store an electrical charge. The reason we need this in computers is because there can be sudden demand for electrical current, which will cause a sharp dip in the local power supply. The introduction of capacitors insures that the power request can be met. In the case of the AX6BC Pro Gold, the capacitors responsible for maintaining current to the CPU are big. Typical BX chipset motherboards that we've seen and use(d) have 1000 and 1500 uf -rated capacitors. The capacitors on the AX6BC Pro Gold are no less than 2200 uf-rated. This extra bit should help especially in overclocked operation, where the demand for power can come often, and quickly.

2200 uf-rated on left, 1000 uf-rated on right