Motherboard Layout & Design

     The Foxconn 755A01 conforms to the ATX standard in pretty much every regard. Of course, the Multiple I/O panel for the back of the enclosure is modified from the stock design that ships with most PC cases, which is why Foxconn provides one that matches the board perfectly. Component layout is smartly placed and again, conforms to the standards of ATX placement for internal cooling-air flow. As we can see from the diagram above (which is provided with the motherboard) just about every important connector, header, and slot is color coded to make the system build process as painless as possible.

     This is the only discrepancy I found between the diagram and the actual board layout is pictured above. The color of the DIMM slots are not all yellow, only one. This reminds me of the color used on nForce2 boards to show the physical location required to achieve dual-channel DRAM operation. We know that isn't the case because Socket 754 processors have the memory controller built onto the CPU itself. We can also see another popular motherboard design, putting all of the large connectors (Both IDE, the floppy connector, and the 20-pin ATX power connectors) together in one area to localize the mess. The ITE Super I/O chip has been tucked away on this corner of the motherboard too, oriented in the pictures bottom right.

     The bottom edge of the motherboard has all the typical findings, to include the (Sis964) Southbridge, Bios Clear/Protect Jumper, Serial ATA connectors [pink] and USB headers [blue]. The header on the far bottom right of the boat protected with the black shroud is the complex I/O "front panel connector" for the enclosures power/reset button, IDE/Power LED. The header for the PC Speaker is sub-located off of the main I/O header block and is located under the buzzer provided on the mainboard. The Silicone Image SATA chipset is also nestled in a very popular location on this end of the motherboard's[

     A little research shows that one of the connectors is arranged a little different than normal, the Power LED. This is a facsimile of the page in the Users Manual that depicts the configuration of that connector. The only issue is the Power LED block because most enclosures use a connector that spans across four pins, not just two side-by-side. As a side-note, I would like to include that the Cooler Master Cavalier that I just reviewed is set-up for this by having the positive and negative leads actually split apart so you can fit them onto whatever style header block the motherboard you intend to use with it should have.