ASUS M2A-VM Motherboard - AMD 690 Chipset Review :: Layout of the ASUS M2A-VM board

ASUS M2A-VM Spec Sheet
Powered by MOBOT
Part Number	M2A-VM
Manufacturer	ASUS
Price Check	Find Best Price
Downloads	BIOS Drivers Manuals
Chipset	AMD 690
North Bridge	AMD 690G
Socket	Socket AM2 (940)
Processor Types	Athlon 64X2, Athlon 64FX, Athlon 64, Sempron
Number of CPUs	1
Front Side Bus	2000/1600 MT/s
Memory Type	DDR2
Memory Channels	Dual
Maximum Memory	8GB
External Graphics	PCI Express x16
IGP	ATI Radeon 1200
South Bridge	ATI SB600
Audio	8-channel
IDE	133/100/66/33
SCSI	None
SATA	3.0 GB/s
RAID	0, 1, 0+1
LAN	10/100/1000
Firewire	None
USB	USB 2.0
Expansion Slots
BIOS	AWARD
Form Factor	ATX

24-pin power

4-pin power

The power connectors on the board are in the correct positions, with the 4-pin power connector on the top of the board near the edge and the 24-pin ATX connection on the bottom of the board next to the IDE connection. The positioning of the memory slots is directly under the CPU cooler, but a PCI Express x16 card would block the memory insertion/removal if the slot is open. An overly long card like the 8800GTX might block all four DIMM slots, but the normal 7900GT we use for testing blocks a single slot.

CPU area

Capacitors

Southbridge

Northbridge

The CPU area is clear of obstacles, allowing for after market cooling solutions like the Zalman AMD cooler without any difficulty. The capacitors are aligned on the top of the CPU cooling area leaving the other sides of the bracket clear. ASUS decided to cool the North and South bridges with passive heatsinks. The system was 100% stable with no heat errors.

PCI Express x16 lock

Expansion

FP IO

USB headers

Power LED

Fan headers

Rear IO

The rest of the layout of the board is as to be expected from a mini-ATX board. There is limited expandability due to the size of the board but there is a single PCI Express x1 slot, two PCI slots and the PCI Express x16 slot if you need to install additional devices like a RAID controller or an add-on graphics card like the 8800GTX or X1950XTX. Three USB headers bring the total the board supports to 10. The rear I/O consists of PS/2 Mouse, Keyboard, Parallel, 4 USB 2.0 ports, a RJ45 jack for the onboard Gigabit Ethernet, and three audio jacks for the onboard sound.

Discuss This Article