New product Aopen AX4SPE

The motherboard Aopen AX4SPE MAX is the leader in the line of the company's products on the base of i865 chipsets. However, the insertion of the BIOS model with the support of the PAT technology was applied to this motherboard in the last turn. The motherboard has a rich functionality and a good set, responding to a high status of the card. The company proposes other solutions on the base of i865PE. These motherboards are based on a common PCB design and have a lack of support for peripheral devices.

The AX4SPE-L does not have an additional SATA RAID-controller, FireWire and a chipset support for the Serial ATA due to usage of the southern bridge ICH5. This model also does not possess the Gigabit LAN (it uses an external chip, Broadcom 10/100 Mbit).

Interconnections of the Aopen AX4SPE are performed with high attention to stability requirements. That is the reason why schemes of the voltage stabilizers forced the usual places of FDD and IDE sockets to be changed. This way the motherboard became less convenient for connecting and using. Sound sockets are placed before PCI slots and SATA sockets. The access to some interconnections is not very simple after the card installation. At the same time, the description of the interconnections' functionality is provided in the most unexpected points of the textolite. The adjustment of interconnections can be complicated without a paper manual.

There is a four channel impulse stabilizer of the processor voltage. It uses four condensers for 3300 Mkf, four condensers for 1200 Mkf and some details with a lower capacity. There are also stabilizers for the voltage of AGP and memory buses.

Aopen developed and implemented some original technologies in the Aopen AX4SPE:

The Aopen AX4SPE does not include any unsoldered elements, since it is designed on the PCB and does not suppose any ways for the on-board set. The ability of +5V voltage in a Standby mode is indicated with a light-diode. There is also a light-diode, which blinks in, while the POST procedure is being passed. The flashing stops when the POST is completed. A light diode, placed before the AGP slot, states that the settings of old video cards with the power supply voltage +3.3 V are incompatible for the current motherboard.

The system monitoring is performed with opportunities of the micro-chip ITE IT8712F-A. This scheme also performs functions of LPC Super I/O. There are opportunities to control the processor voltage, clock for two air-exhausters cooling, temperature of the processors and the motherboard. The motherboard uses the PAT technology and it is called PBE (Performance Boost Engine) for the current model.