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The layout of the EVGA nForce4 SLI x16 board is excellent in most respects. The CPU Socket area is clear of obstacles, with the capacitors of the board aligned neatly on the bottom of the CPU Socket area. The 24-pin ATX power connector is in the normal position, next to the IDE ports. The 4-pin 12V connector is on the top of the board, allowing the user to route the power cable directly from the PSU. There are three available fan headers besides the CPU fan and the chipset fan. EVGA decided to cool the notoriously hot running nForce4 SLI x16 MCP with a fan. The chipset ran smoothly with no problems as to stability. The North Bridge chip is cooled by a heatsink. The EVGA board has three headers for USB connectors, bringing the maximum supported by the board to 10. A VIA VT6307S chip controls the Firewire ports. One oddity of the positioning of the SATA ports on the board is that two of the ports are nearly directly under a PCI Express x16 slot. If you are going to go the SLI route with this board two of the SATA ports might conflict with the placement of a long video card like the 7950 GX2 or 7900 GTX. Also troubling a bit is the placement of the FDC. It is placed on the far end of the board meaning that you have to route the FDD cable over or around two video cards to install it when two cards are installed. EVGA put a LED above the Front Panel connections to show if there's a problem with boot. If a FF shows on the LED after POST, it's likely the board will boot without a problem. If something else shows up on the LED and the computer doesn't boot into Windows, consult the manual for the likely cause from the LED code. EVGA includes Power and Reset buttons on the board allowing for people to turn on the computer easily and outside a case. Contents:
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