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Layout

Having established why two phases are not the same as two phases (BTW, a similar controller is used by EPoX on the 8KHA(+), it is time to move on to some more obvious features of the board. The PCB of the A7V266-E is 245 mm wide and, thus, slightly larger than the average even though it is only 10 mm more than e.g. the MSI K7T266Pro2. Aside of the potential problems of fitting it into a smaller case, the advantage is that the board actually reaches over to the extended mounting stand-offs, meaning that the right edge of the PCB is not suspended in thin air, which, once everything is set up doesn't matter but sometimes makes it difficult to plug in the IDE cables without bending the PCB.

Courtesy of the advanced features of the ON-Semi power circuitry, there is very little need for ripple current buffering which, in turn, results in a reduced number of capacitors and consequently, the area around the Socket 462 is basically empty. The socket itself is rotated by 90 degrees, resulting in a horizontal axis of the standard heatsink mounting clips which makes live much easier with the current generation of HSF monsters. The A7V266-E features the additional four mounting holes for CPU coolers should they be required.

The ATX power connector is on the far side of the DIMM slots, adjacent to the standard IDE connectors, which is far enough away from the CPU socket so that there is virtually no possibility of interference in air flow. The secondary connector is placed towards the edge of the PCB which is convenient since it allows to loop the secondary ribbon cable underneath the mainboard without interference with the primary channel cable. The Promise RAID / UATA 100 connectors are above the generic connectors. The floppy connector is at the bottom of the board between PCI slots 4 and 5. This position is somewhat awkward, even though it invites looping the floppy cable underneath the mainboard this arrangement then occludes some of the additional device headers and also interferes with PCI cards in slot #5 or any extended ACR cards. Depending on the placement of the floppy drive, it may also require an extra long cable but all those things are solvable one way or the other, even if it may require some thinking.

Regardless of whether it is really needed, it is always nice to see active cooling of the North Bridge with a high-quality cooler and dedicated fan hook-up, so that no other fan output needs to be wasted. Instead of a standard AGP slot, the A7V266-E comes equipped with the AGP Pro slot without retention mechanism. Personally, I don't miss the retention unit one bit since in most cases, it is more of a nuisance than an improvement but for shipping units it does have some definite merits. Already mentioned were the 5 PCI slots and the ACR slot which allows using some of the newer Advanced Communication Riser devices that are actually beginning to look interesting.

In addition to the chipset fan power, three more fan headers are on the board offering enough hookup possibilities for excessive ventilation. If more fans are used, they should be hooked up to the power supply directly anyway to avoid overloading the mainboard circuitry. All in all, there aren't any complaints about the layout, at least the top half of the board is very spacious, making everything readily accessible. The bottom area of the board is somewhat crowded with extra headers that can be a bit confusing.

On-Board Sound

Only one week ago, we complained that practically all VIA KT266A-based mainboard use the VIA AC97 Audio Codec. Since audio is a part of multimedia experience it is somewhat inconceivable why it is not possible to provide a rounded solution to begin with. This is where Iwill's KK266 Plus made a big entrance, simply because, everything else being equal, a good quality sound is a very good selling point. ASUS is using the CMedia 8738 6-channel audio chip on the A7V266-E and deserves some major kudos for that.

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