Motherboard Layout
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
The Asus K8V Deluxe layout is decent as it meets all the major requirements that we ask of them here at Amdmb.com.
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The CPU socket, for your 754-pin Athlon 64 processor, as you can see below, uses the standard Socket 940/754 retention system for heatsinks. There are some heatsinks available already, including the Zalman CNPS7000 that use their own custom mounting system. On the PCB of the board itself, there are four holes (at nearly the corners of the black retention clip shown) that are NOT cut out, that look like they could have been used for even more cooling solutions, such as water cooling. I don’t know why Asus decided to not cut the holes out but it is possible a later revision will do so.
The ATX power connector is pulled all the way to the right of the board, past the DIMM slots where we actually prefer it. In this location, it is less likely to interfere with a CPU fan by crossing over it. Asus also included a 4-pin ATX12V power connector, located at the top left of the motherboard.
The DIMM slots are well placed and do not interfere with any AGP card installation. The problems that we noticed were quite frequent in our KT600 roundup don’t seem to be apparent in the initial Athlon 64 boards.
The K8T800 north bridge is covered by a small heatsink, but it is tightly secured for a good contact between the metal and chip. The north bridge has not been a big problem overheating in our tests, so Asus’ decision to not include a larger heatsink or fan and it shouldn’t be a big fault.
The primary IDE channels are found to the right of the ATX power connector, in a vertical alignment, parallel to the side of the motherboard. This placement keeps the PCB a bit shorter than would be needed other wise and by including them above the AGP line on the board, it makes in-case upgrades and changes much easier. The floppy connector is below the IDE channels, with the perpendicular installation method to keep the floppy cable from interfering with the installed AGP graphics cards or PCI cards. There is another IDE channel from an external chipset below the floppy connector as well.
There are four Serial ATA connectors/channels on the Asus K8V Deluxe motherboard and they are separated well to let you know which device is their source. You won’t easily confuse the Promise SATA channels from the VIA SATA channels.
The case jumper connectors are color coded and well labeled for easy, manual-less installation – one of my pet peeves. 🙂 There are two USB 2.0 headers below the 5th PCI slot and an additional Firewire header up by the north bridge heatsink.
The slot configuration is a standard 5 PCI and 1 AGP slot with retention clip. The CMOS battery and Clear jumper are located to the right of the 2nd and 3rd PCI slot, making them nearly impossible to get to if you have PCI cards in those slots. This is one of those annoyances that most people will overlook until they are forced to do it. There is a small black slot we’ll go over on the next page.
