L O S T C I R C U I T S

What you get

As with all current ASUS mainboards, the shipping box contains the mainboard, a 40 as well as an 80 conductor ribbon cable and the standard floppy connector cable. In typical ASUS fashion, the manual states that the floppy cable included supports the outdated 5 ¼ floppy drives by means of the bulky connectors, fortunately, though, either marketing has found the way to the present or else the stock was finally exhausted. Either way, congratulations for getting rid of these monsters. Included in the shipping package is further a two-port additional USB connector, a somewhat rare feature, even though most current boards sport the additional headers. An excellent, ASUS-style manual and the no less excellent driver CD complement the shipping content.

The first step in the BIOS life-update utility prompts to select the BIOS source either from the web or from file. To be on the safe side, it is better to download the file first and then use the saved file as update source.

The second step allows to reserve the DMI data (user defined settings etc.) in the EEPROM and displays the file name of the new BIOS binary. The sliding bars indicate the progress of the flashing procedure. The upgrade went without any glitches.

Quality

As with all ASUS products, the A7M266 presents itself in immaculate finish and quality. The voltage regulator circuitry is something I have never come across yet but it does appear like a 2 phase circuitry feeding into four separate MOSFETs backed by a handful of 1200 (16V) and 2200 µF (6.3V) capacitors. Whoever thinks that capacitors are capacitors will probably not appreciate the fact that those used in the line of power to the North Bridge are manufactured by none other than Nichicon, a brand that otherwise is only used by Intel and AMD for their reference boards. Needless to say that these little gems are in a slightly higher price range than the average garden variety used on most boards, however, the quality is even higher than the price.

A rather massive heatsink / fan cools the North Bridge. To assure functionality, the fan uses a three-wire connector with the sensor talking to the hardware monitoring to issue a warning, in case the fan is inoperable

To avoid any thermal problems with the AMD761 North Bridge, it is covered with a huge heatsink/fan combination powered through a distinct fan header at the lower end of the DIMM slots. The latter are of the quality that you need a hammer to initially insert the DIMMs but probably the hammer will break before the DIMM slot does. In one sentence, none of the components used on the A7M266 is less than industrial strength quality, if you thought you'd seen it all before, you are wrong, the A7M266 sets new standards.

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