Market Survey, Part 1: A Comparison Of The Latest Pentium 4 Motherboards

Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE, Continued

Fixed voltage regulators are equipped with large cooling units, and are located within an air duct outfitted with two 40 mm fans.

The Northbridge is equipped with an active fan. While this is generally seen as a disadvantage due to noise considerations, it's favorable in a water cooling scenario, since the Northbridge needs the CPU cooler's air flow.

A bonus for modding fans: the Fatal1TY-AA8X is decked out with LEDs on the back and glows red inside the case.

Abit includes a memory cooler that attaches onto the memory socket like a clip. However, since the DDR2 DIMMs don't really get very warm, this doesn't accomplish anything.

Abit is the first manufacturer to equip the current Fatal1ty board with SATA 2 connections and cables.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.