AOpen AK73-1394 (A), Continued
The board uses VIA's 686B south bridge, providing two UltraATA/100 channels for max. four devices. Three DIMM sockets, five PCI, one ISA, one AMR, an AGP 4x slot with card locking system and a sound system according to AC97 complete the hardware features.
You might get trouble with large CPU coolers, as three capacitors are rather close to the socket. However, the two coolers that I used did not cause any problems.
Once again AOpen proved to create a reliable motherboard with good performance at a good price. Thanks to the various accessories included, AOpen reaches a far better price/performance ratio than others.
That's AOpen's cooler on VIA's VT8363A chip. It definitely looks much nicer than other heat sinks.
As already said, the AOpen package includes practically everything.
