BIOSTAR TForce 590 SLI Motherboard Review :: TForce 590 SLI Layout

The placement of the 8-pin power connector is behind the CPU forcing you to either snake the cable over or around the CPU cooler from the PSU. This is a minor quibble, as the system builder can easily do it, but it is a consideration. The placement of the 24-pin power connector is on the bottom of the board, but the IDE and FDD connectors are before it. The MCP55 is cooled by a small heatsink. The nForce 590 SLI chip is cooled by a heatsink/fan combination that looks like a video card cooler in some respects.

8-pin power

24-pin power

CPU area

USB headers

Firewire

nForce 590 SLI Northbridge

Biostar has added two USB headers to allow up to 8 USB connections on the board with the included headers. A single 1394B header is also on the board, bringing Firewire support to the TForce 590 SLI board. Biostar includes a LED to show the status of the board, with FF meaning it should boot to Windows. The manual has a list of error codes but I encountered no problems with the motherboard.

LED

CPUFan

JNFan

Clear CMOS

Reset Start

Front Panel

Molex connector

MOSFET heatsinks

One issue I had with the motherboard layout was the positioning of the Molex power connector for stability when SLI mode was enabled. It is on the far left hand corner of the board meaning that you'll have to snake the connector across the CPU cooler, the video cards and other expansion devices from the PSU. Four fan headers including the CPUFAN and Southbridge fan are present on the board. There are Reset and Start buttons on the board, making it easy to turn on and off the computer without attaching everything. Heatsinks cover the MOSFETs keeping them cool.

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