Layout/Chipset

VIA where for art thou

The VIA Apollo Pro133A 694 is the glue that binds each of these boards together. By far the largest chip on the motherboard, the 694 has a heatsink on two of the boards, the Abit and the ASUS. MSI for some reason decided not to include one. This might hamper overclocking efforts, nothing a little aftermarket heatsink and some thermal paste won't cure.

The other half of the VIA chipset, the south bridge, varies from board to board. The 686B is present on the ASUS and Abit, while the MSI has the 686A. What does this mean to you? The 686B adds native ATA100 support, that's about it. Most of the time newer is better - in this case we'd have to agree.

Abit VP6

VP6 capacitor layout

Hard drives?

Surprisingly, each of these board manufacturers managed to have a different take on how to connect all those little drives you have. Abit decided to toss on the Highpoint 370 controller for some ATA100 RAID action, along with the usual two IDE controllers on the board. MSI chose to go with the Promise ATA100 RAID controller, also opting to keep the usual IDE connectors.

ASUS decided to use the 686B south bridge, putting on only two ATA100 connectors. This does make things a little difficult if you have multiple hard drives and CD-ROMs. Our CUV4X-D comes with only two conventional IDE connectors, but ASUS also offers a more robust CUV4X-LDS model with onboard LAN and Ultra160 SCSI. You can even see the spot on the motherboard where the onboard SCSI would have been; and, that, my friends, is the most styling way to go. Of course that board will also set you back a bundle.

Asus Cuv4x-D

CUV4X-D cap layout

Since these RAID controllers are pretty common, we didn't see the need to go through the performance benefits and losses again in this article. If you wish to see scores on how well RAID works check out our other reviews.

Get out of the way! It needs to breath!

Poor capacitor layout is easily one of the chief problems that gets in the way of serious cooling efforts. Abit seems to have the cleanest capacitor layout out of the bunch. We easily placed a golden orb onto this board; chances are you can get something bigger on there pretty easily.

Where the U160 should be on the ASUS...

MSI 694D Pro

The MSI board utilizes a combination of 1500 and 2700 uF capacitors arranged in what seems to be a totally random pattern. These don't seem to be much of a problem; it's mainly the inductors (the little green donuts) and the motherboard power connector that might be the troublemakers here. Both are relatively close to the CPU sockets.

The ASUS board seems to have a slightly better arrangement. The board maintains the random arrangement of capacitors, but manages to keep them mostly out of the way of the sockets. Only two really tiny capacitors are close enough to one socket to possibly pose a problem.

Despite the relatively clean layouts, having a heavy-duty cooler like an Alpha combo is going to be impossible for all of the boards. This is because of the inherent positioning of the sockets themselves, remember we are dealing with two CPUs. Even if the field is clear for one cooler, the other may not fit. You'll have to observe the board layouts very carefully to find out if two behemoth coolers will actually fit.