The Layout
The
ATX power connector is conveniently located at the top of the board. Likewise
the IDE and Floppy IDE connectors are placed on the right edge of the board adjacent
to the memory. Also nice to note is that the memory slots are conveniently located
as to not disturb the layout of the rest of the board nor do they interfere with
very large CPU heatsinks.
The
layout of the entire board is very typical Tyan: clean.
One very nice feature of this motherboard is that it features 4 power connectors
for fans. One is used for the heatsink/fan on the CPU but that still leaves an
impressive 3 connections for case fans.
I
was surprised to see that Tyan chose to use American Megatrends' BIOS rather than
Award BIOS. The BIOS actually turned out to have an impressive amount of tweaks
in it but that is not what we normally expect when we see the American Megatrends
boot up screen. Needless to say this is not something I would base a purchasing
decision on since the BIOS offers a lot of customability.
