You
definitely have to hand it to the engineers at
Abit
Computer. While many motherboard manufacturers are
taking steps to differentiate their board from the masses,
by bundling in gimmick goodies, like FrontX drive bay boxes
and travel bags, Abit has been delivering breakout
innovative motherboard designs, that call attention to
themselves all on their own. Abit's "MAX" series of
motherboards was the first and currently the only design
approach, that completely eliminates legacy serial and LPT
ports, in favor of USB 2.0 and Firewire connectivity.
Pack in some rounded IDE cables, your standard assortment of
SATA cabling, fashion on a killer chipset heat-sink and one
would think Abit went the distance, to deliver something new
and exciting in a motherboard. However, the engineers
at Abit recently decided to go a few steps further.
One area
of instability, in overclockable motherboards for the
enthusiast crowd, has always been power regulation and
MOSFET cooling, in the CPU power circuit. Pentium 4
boards, like the Abit IC7-MAX3, these days are
designed with robust multi-phase power circuits. While
these power circuits provide stable clean power to the CPU
and DRAM, they also often times generate a fair amount of
heat. As such, case temperatures inside a highly tuned
performance rig, can get to very uncomfortable levels,
resulting in the proverbial "easy bake oven" effect for your
Pentium 4 or Athlon CPU and motherboard. It was in
this area that Abit decided to go above and beyond the call
of duty and designed their "OTES" (Outside Thermal Exhaust
System) for the PWM (pulse width modulation) and power
MOSFET (metal oxide field effect transistor) circuits on the
IC7-MAX3.
We've
shown you what the OTES setup can do for a hot running GPU
like the
GeForce FX 5900. What can Abit's OTES do for a
Canterwood Motherboard? We're about to find out.
Chipset
- Intel 875P / ICH5 RAID
- Support Intel CSA Gigabit LAN
- Supports Dual Channel DDR 400 with ECC function
- Supports Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT)
function
- Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management
Interface (ACPI)
Memory
- Four 184-pin DIMM sockets
- Supports 4 DIMM Dual DDR 400 memory.(Max. 4GB)
- Supports configurable ECC function
AGP
- Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP PRO
8X/4X (0.8V/1.5V)
Dual SATA RAID
- 2 channel SATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID
function (0/1) via South Bridge
- 4 channel SATA 150MB/s data transfer rate with RAID
function (0/1/0+1) via Silicon Image PCI Chip
Secure IDE?
- X-Wall® Chip ensures privacy and confidentiality of
your data through entire disk encryption
- Hardware secure key authenticates during computer
booting
- Without the key, your hard disk can not be accessed
- Device Driver free, Compatible with all OS
- Zero CPU and memory utilization
- Ultra ATA 100/133 hard drive supported
- Automatic and transparent encryption/decryption
Audio
- 6-Channel AC 97 CODEC on board - Professional
digital audio interface supports 24-bit S/P DIF
optical In/Out
IEEE 1394
- Supports IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400 Mb/s transfer
rate
Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 x AGP, 5 x PCI slots
- 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88MB
- 2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100 Connectors
- 4 x SATA 150 Connectors
- 2 x USB 2.0 headers, 2 x IEEE 1394a header
- 1 x CD-IN, 1 x AUX-IN
Back Panel I/O
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse
- 1 x S/PDIF Out connector, 1 x S/PDIF In connector
- 1 x Audio connectors (Front Speaker, Line-in, Mic-in)
- 1 x Audio connectors (Center/Sub, Surround Speaker)
- 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE 1394a
- 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector
Package Contents
IC7-MAX3 Motherboard x 1
SATA Single cable x 4
User's Manual x 1
SATA power cable x 2
Quick Installatio Guide x 1
IEEE 1394 6P + 4P + USB 2.0
Support CD x 1
Utility Disk x1
Bracket cable x 1
Jumper Setting Label x 1
I/O
Shield x 1
Rounded Ultra DMA Cable x 2
SecureIDE x 1
Rounded FDD cable x 1
Ladies and
Germs, if you were looking for "bling", it's pretty safe to
say the IC7-MAX3 just about has it all. We'll dig into
the motherboard design shortly but a quick gander at the
specs above and the noted package contents list, and we
think you'll agree that just about every option you could
want in a motherboard is covered. Rounded PATA IDE
cables, SATA power and data cables, a USB/Firewire port
back-plate, a driver disk, installation and quick start
manuals, as well as a "Secure IDE" data encryption board
(more on this later), all come bundled with the IC7-MAX3.
Abit also includes of course, a custom I/O back-plate to
adapt the IC7-MAX3's unique connector panel to any standard
ATX case. With 6 channels of Serial ATA, both with
RAID capability, Gigabit Ethernet, 6 channel Audio, AGP8X,
Secure IDE and of course "OTES", this board is decked out
but good and we're willing to bet it overclocks with the
best of them. Let's have a closer look.
