| AOpen i915GMm-HFS Spec Sheet |
| Powered by MOBOT |
|
| Part Number | i915GMm-HFS |
| Manufacturer | AOpen |
| Price Check | Find Best Price |
| Downloads | BIOS
Drivers
Manuals |
| Chipset | Intel 915GM Express ICH6M |
| North Bridge | Intel 82915GM GMCH |
| Socket | Socket 479 |
| Processor Types | Celeron M, Pentium M |
| Number of CPUs | 1 |
| Front Side Bus | 533/400MHz |
| Memory Type | DDR, DDR2 |
| Memory Channels | Dual |
| Maximum Memory | 2GB |
| External Graphics | PCI Express x16 |
| IGP | Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 |
| South Bridge | Intel 82801FM ICH6M |
| Audio | 8-channel |
| IDE | 100/66/33 |
| SCSI | None |
| SATA | 1.5 GB/s |
| RAID | None |
| LAN | 10/100/1000 |
| Firewire | IEEE 1394a |
| USB | USB 2.0 |
| Expansion Slots | |
| BIOS | AWARD |
| Form Factor | microATX |
|
Immediately after taking the motherboard out of the box, the differences between this, and many others becomes readily apparent. The first of which is the rather unique layout, which mimics that of BTX, without complying to having the position of memory and expansion cards inverted. Starting the usual tour-de-force at the top left hand corner of the motherboard, we see nothing but an assortment of traces; solder points in chips, followed shortly by a quadrant of DDR1 memory slots, set in Aopen's usual black and blue theme, to denotate the channels used. As we move eastward, the top portion of the power circuitry and connectors can be found, with the ATX and 12V headers conveniently placed together for easy wire management. As you'll notice just below the CPU socket, there are a pair of jumpers, which will select your chip's FSB and voltage - while there is a potential here to run some slower chips quite a bit faster, be warned that Aopen's bundled cooling solution is only intended to handle processors in their stock states. Still, it might be worth a try; after all, free performance is always good.
Moving eastbound again, we come across the S479 module, which, although it looks like a Socket 478 module to an extent, it will more than likely not accept the chips. Just to the left of this is a sizeable passive Northbridge cooler, decked in silver. Just below this hub of communication lies the expansion slots, which come to the tune of a single X16 PCI-E slot, a single X1 PCI-E slot and a duet of PCI-Slots, most of which will probably go unutilized, for a reason we'll show you when the board gets around to the I/O Area. Just to the right of these slots is the hub of all things storage - a quadrant of SATA ports provided by the Southbridge, a ton of USB provided with the aid of an onboard chip, and the motherboard's general headers, all placed well within reach. Of course, while powering this all, the Southbridge will get rather toasty, and as such, Aopen chose to fight the problem with a stylish custom heat sink that has their name running through it. To help in the setup of the board, Aopen has chosen to colour code the general block, as well as colour the SATA ports in red and black, dependant on their function - definitely a plus. Perhaps the only problem present in this area is in the usage of the PCI-Express slot. In order to make use of it, you must first disable the robust onboard graphics, a procedure which is done by pulling the jumper blocks right below the slot - a task which, if not properly equipped, quickly becomes a nightmare.
On the final stretch of the motherboard journey, we come across a few small chips, notably the bios and a chip designed by Winbond for monitoring - neither of which is truly as important as what's just up ahead. Perched far up the I/O shield above, past the eight channel audio, quadruple USB ports or dual Ethernet jacks is a proprietary jack which gives you S-Video and Composite support, as well as a trio of ports above which will feed any HDTV's lust for pixels. While the 915's inbuilt video capabilities might not be so good for gaming, when augmented with the chips you can spot just below the PCI-Express slot, it becomes quite a viable output for HDTV, especially considering that you're normal onboard video options are no longer limited to VGA, as a DVI port is also present. With such a rich feature set on the output side of things, you're a scant few components away from creating a fully featured and hard hitting PVR system with this board. With the analysis complete, let's get on to seeing how setting it up went.
