AOpen AX4B
Board Revision: ?
BIOS Version: 1.02 (January 14, 2002)
From time to time, motherboards from AOpen are also perfectly suitable for overclocking. This applies to the AX4B, where the CPU core voltage can be adjusted between 1.1 and 1.85 V in 0.025 V increments. Unfortunately, this board does not have many monitoring functions. Though the CPU and system temperature is registered, there is no fan speed control or rotation speed tracing.
Everything else looks fine: there is an AC97 sound system (with codec from Analog Devices), 3 DIMM sockets for up to 3 GB RAM and 5 PCI slots. A small piezo speaker makes your PC speaker obsolete. System integrators will be happy about the AGP card locking system that makes sure the AGP card stays firmly in the slot during system transportation.
At 2196 MHz, AOpen runs slightly below the maximum specified clock speed of the test CPU (Pentium 4 2.2 GHz) - we prefer this rather than getting motherboards that run much faster than they should. Overclocking should be left to the user!
AOpen ships their motherboards in a slim box with a small window. Here you can usually take a quick look at the CPU socket, the chipset cooler and sometimes the DIMM sockets, too.
The AX4B is a typical retail motherboard - the package is nicely designed and contains everything you want. In addition to an excellent manual and a driver CD, there is a short but useful installation guide, a full set of cables and Norton Anti Virus 2001.
