PC Partner RC410MS7-A82C

Board Layout:

Due to the micro-ATX motherboard's limited space only two DDR2-667 slots made their way onto the RC410MS7-A82C. These two red DDR2 slots are positioned between several green capacitors. Filling up the space between the memory and the edge of the PCB, is a 24-pin ATX power connector, floppy disk connector, and an ITE IT8712F-A Super I/O controller. Adjoining the bottom of the memory slots are two ATA-133 IDE ports as well as two Serial ATA ports. Next to the secondary IDE connector is also the front panel LED and switch headers. The Southbridge used on the RC410MS7-A82C is ATI's SB450. Recently the SB450 Southbridge has generated some negative publicity due to slower USB 2.0 transfer speeds, lack of SATA2 support, and RAID options. Some manufacturers have turned to ULI for a compatible Southbridge (i.e. ULI 1573) but PC Partner remains loyal to its ATI offerings. Cooling the SB450 is a petite aluminum heatsink that is attached via thermal adhesive. Also in this bottom corner of the motherboard is a 3-pin system fan header.

Moving towards the back of the motherboard there are quite a few jumpers and headers coating the black PCB. In the lower left hand corner is the BIOS chip as well as an on-board speaker, CMOS jumper, and two integrated LEDs for indicating the motherboard's power status. Below the second PCI slot are also the two USB 2.0 headers while adjacent to the expansion slots is Realtek's ALC655 AC'97 Rev 2.3 Audio CODEC and RTL8100C Gigabit ethernet ASIC. The expansion slots available on the PC Partner RC410MS7-A82C are one PCI Express x16 and 2 PCI slots. Cornering the PCI Express slot is the +3V CMOS battery. Uncovering the Northbridge heatsink, via pushpins in the two opposing corners, is ATI's Xpress 200 RC410 Chipset. The RC410 is designed to compete with Intel's i915G and NVIDIA's C60 Chipsets, both of which offer respectable onboard graphics. The ATI Chipset supports Intel's LGA-775 processors including the Pentium D with DDR/DDR2 memory support up to 4GB of system memory and X300 graphics. The Northbridge heatsink is passive and consists of nine aluminum fins. To the left of the Northbridge and CPU socket area is a great deal of power circuitry along with a 4-pin ATX power connector. Looking around the direct CPU socket area there is some power circuitry but for the most part, it is clear of any components that could potentially cause hazard when installing an aftermarket heatsink/fan combination or waterblock. To the right of the CPU area is the 4-pin CPU fan header.

At the rear of the motherboard are the two PS/2 (keyboard & mouse), four USB 2.0, one printer, one COM, one VGA, one 10/100/1000 ethernet, and three audio ports. For the motherboard being micro-ATX, it is very much well designed and easy to work with and is not filled with an abundance of integrated components. Unfortunately, no Firewire support made its way onto the motherboard or any PCI Express x1 slots.