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AOpen AOpen AX4GE Max Motherboard Review
Date Posted: Mar 1 2003
Author: Joe
Posting Type: Review
Category: Motherboard Reviews
Page: 2 of 4
Article Rank:No Rank Yet
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Note: This is a legacy article, imported from old code. Due to this some items on the page may not function as expected. Links, Colors, and some images may not be set correctly.
AOpen AX4GE Max Motherboard Review By: Joe

The HookUp - (The various connections this thing has)

ATX IO panel.

The ATX I/O panel on the AX4GE Max is pretty much standard for loaded GE boards. IT sports 4 USB ports, the standard PS/2 ports, Analog Audio, Parallel and Serial, VGA, and the ethernet RJ45

I personally really like having the ethernet in the ATX I/O Panel, it makes finding the ethernet jack easier when you are reaching around the back of the machine I think.  The Audio is nice there, but as we showed before the AX4GE has a separate Digital Audio panel also. (I have yet to memorize what ghey pastel color on the audio connections mean "speaker out" and "Line in"...)

"5.1 Speaker Audio Effect"

It's funny that I mention not knowing what the audio jack colors mean normally, since on this board they can be used 2 ways!!.  The normal with Line-in/Mic/Line-out, or in a DD5.1 setup, using the 3 Analog stereo jacks on the back of the ATX I/O. This is all done via the "ALC6550 Codec" which is on this board. This feature is utilized via a special Driver installed off the AOpen CD.  I think this is fairly cool.

Cables / Connections

The board comes with 1 SATA cable, One nice black ATA100 cable with pull tabs, one noticeably yellow ATA 133 cable, one black Floppy cable, a 2 port Fire Wire header, 2 port USB 2.0 Header, and a Digital I/O audio panel.

Running this Thing

I set this board up in a box that is going to run as a DVD burning rig in the long run.  The CPU I am using is a POS. It doesn't OC worth a crap, and really I found this out on this board.   Its a 2.0Ghz P4 retail thats the older stepping ( not the C1 which would rock). The memory is some PC2700 chip I had laying around.  Really I didn't buy any real high end CPU/Ram for this machine since it wasn't going to be used as a serious all out game rig and I needed just smooth stability. But I did think the PC2700 ram and the CPU itself would give some nice OC potential... we will get into that later.

As I said in the beginning there was a reason I dig onboard video... its because I want boards that later on I can roll into a server use on my network down the road, and possibly mount in a 1U chassis. Onboard video facilitates that need of not being able to have any expansion boards ( the onboard LAN also helps ).

Hooking up all the bits and wires for this machine was rather straight forward.  Took a little guessing on where one of the headers was ( the Digital Audio header).  Since there is no add-on boards needed to get the machine running its a very clean case inside once all is done.

BIOS

The BIOS on the board was the pretty much tried and true Phoenix/Award BIOS setup. This BIOS offered a few more tweaks and features than I was expecting to see.  The Integrated Peripherals has more goodies in it than I could get a screen shot of :) Like 2.5 pages of Enable/Disable and value settings.   Pretty nice.

Silent BIOS/HW Monitor

I am going to go over a few areas of the BIOS that I think would be interesting for folks considering this board.

The Silent BIOS / Hardware Monitor area has some nice features that I liked a lot. This board offers its own version of a temperature based PWM functions. They have their own "Silent PC" software but the BIOS can achieve much of the same settings. You can throttle the fans static in here and the Fan Mode allows you to pick a different speed profile:

Fan Modes:

  • Full Speed : Well what it says, 100% all the time.
  • Smart Control: This is temperature based PWM You set a temp in the "CPU Set Temp" and "SYS Set Temp".  The Fan will be run as slow as possible at anything under that specific temp, and then once the temp exceeds the temp setting the fan will increase speed to meet it and reduce it down to the safe temp again.  Pretty damn slick.
  • Fixed speed: you can set it to a fixed %

You can also set the Fan to run at a different speed while at Boot and a once the OS loads ( in %). This is one of the most configurable Fan/Temp BIOS I have ever seen.  Very nice.  I dig the 2 CPU temp readings, One from under the core in the socket and the thermal diode in the CPU itself.

Frequency /Voltage Control

The Frequency / Voltage area of the BIOS is OC HQ for the board. The CPU Buss Speed can be set to any number you type in between 100 and 248. Not bad.

The AGP bus can range from 66 to 96 Mhz

The PCI Bus can range from 33 to 48 Mhz all in single Mhz Increments for both PCI and AGP.

The CPU Voltage can go to 1.925v
The AGP Voltage can go to 1.6v
The DDR Voltage can go to 2.65v

Now it seems pretty simple and straight to OC, but it does NOT seem as if this is a really solid OC thing. The board is smart enough that if you Over OC in here on the first reboot it comes up at the default clock, when you see that you are supposed to jump back in the BIOS and set it back. I have found if you dont do that, then you need to clear the BIOS to get back in. 

The 2Ghz P4 I am using HATES 133 mhz FSB... which is Soo very sad. I did use a 2.0Ghz C1 a few weeks ago for testing, and it got up to in the range of 138Mhz FSB on an Intel stock HSF on this board with the same Ram so I am pretty sure that the Board is good, its just the chip that sucks for OC'n.  at 120Mhz FSB the crap 2.0Ghz P4 I have worked great. (for what its worth hehehe)

Advanced Chipset

This is the normal Advanced Chipset deal most Mobo's have. Simple memory timings, and all that good stuff.  This is also where you enable/disable the embedded AGP video.  This screen was at the default memory timings.  The DDR266 timing setting can be set to Auto and it will run 333 if you have DDR 333 Compatible ram (it reads the SPD chip)

Boot Sequence

The main POST screen is nothing that out there.  I do very much like that it shows the original clock of the CPU and what you have it at.

The Promise SATA chip inits my 120 GB Maxtor ATA 133 Drive.

Does a functional Hardware Monitor Exist?

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My "Lumpy Channel" TEC concept block.
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