Albatron PX845PEV - A quick glance

I wanted to take a few minutes to look at some of the features this board has to offer. This is not an in-depth review, but rather a quick look for those of you considering a new 478 mobo. I've heard numerous things about the bad layout of the board, but a huge number of good things about the actual board! Sooo, it was time for me to find out just which one is more important.

First we will check out the specs of this motherboard.

The PX845PEV does not come with all the extras you find on some motherboards. It has all of the most important features in a new board, most worthy to note would be USB 2.0. The board also sports case open detect, Watch Dog Timer (to reset the system after a lock), S/PDIF in/out header, audio header for a case mounted audio rack, and in order to use the full 6-channel AC'97 the board turns the mic and line-in jacks to center and bass. This is pretty common now, although I always like it better when you get an additional PCI slot mount for the additional channels. Overall a reasonable features set, but no extra goodies or software beyond the ATA/133 and floppy cables included. The manual isn't bad either. It has reasonable amounts of info on setting up the board, and is also easy to read. The board does come with a quick-start sheet, and a sticker you can affix to your case interior which explains all of the mobo headers. This is something I wouldn't mind seeing with more motherboards. Let's take a quick look at the board before we discuss the layout:

An overall shot of the PX845PEV

From here you can really see how close the DDR slots are to the AGP slot.

We actually have a fair amount of clearance around the socket.

After hearing some of the horror stories of people trying to get everything plugged in appropriately, I expected a struggle in getting everything configured. To my delight, it wasn't really that bad. It wasn't perfect, but it could have been worse. The biggest problems that you should be concerned with are the spacing around the AGP/DDR slots, the floppy drive connector, and the 12 volt motherboard power header.

Take a close look at the second picture, and you can see just how close the DDR slots are to the AGP slot. This means that you have to remove your video card to install and uninstall RAM. If you change RAM a lot I'm sure this will get annoying. Not a big deal if you don't plan on swapping out on a regular basis, but a design flaw nonetheless. Looking again at the same picture, you can see the floppy connector located below the last PCI slot, and the 12V mobo power header running right alongside the DIMM slots. These are both terrible locations. If you have a tall case and a short floppy cable you are in trouble. The main annoyance with the power header is that it sits so close to the RAM slots, and you will inevitabely have that big power cord running across your mobo and blocking heat. Some tweaking and moving helps out, and with some work you can get it relatively well concealed.

In the pictures below, you can see all the built in ports; including 10/100 LAN, 2 USB 2.0 ports and the audio jacks. Nothing strange here, and as I explained, the audio jacks will change their function if you have 6-channel audio enabled.

LAN, audio, USB 2.0...

Another shot of the rear jacks

This P4 2.53GHz finds its new home

I was pretty happy with this board. If you can handle some of the design quirks, it has actually proved itself to be very stable. Not so much as a hiccup after 70 runs of SiSoft Sandra's burn-in tests (with all tests on each run), or numerous 3DMark runs. It features some great looking overclocking settings, unfortunately I won't have the opportunity to OC the Pentium 4 you see in that last pic, but I'd be interested to hear your success.

Overall, I was pleased with this board and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a reasonably priced, integrated solution. If you have an interest in overclocking, this board sports the settings, and if not, it is a very stable solution. Until next time tweakers, fare well!

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