ABIT IT7 MAX2 V.2 (845PE)

ABIT IT7 MAX2 Version 2: Board Layout

In general we were very pleased with the general layout of the ABIT IT7 MAX2 V.2.

As we’ve always preferred, ABIT places the ATX (20-pin) connector on the right-hand side of the motherboard above the DIMM slots. This is the ideal position for the ATX connector positionaly, as the thick ATX wires won’t become obstruct the installation/uninstallation of the HSF or any other components that can be modified around that area.

The Primary and Secondary IDE connectors are also placed very nicely. Both connectors are placed above where our video card was installed. This will allow the end user to install an IDE drive at the very top of a full-sized ATX computer case. If both connectors were placed below the video card, you would likely have to maneuver your IDE cables around the video card (causing some clutter) and then hope that your IDE cables are long enough to reach the uppermost bay of your computer case. Unfortunately, when the Primary and Secondary IDE connectors are placed below the video card, most of the time you won’t be able to install an optical drive in the first bay of an ATX case.

Thankfully the DIMM connectors are located just far away enough from our video card that we weren’t forced to uninstall the video card before installing/uninstalling memory. This is true for all modern video cards, including some of the lengthy GeForce4 Ti4600 cards. ABIT was smart enough to rid us of this annoying issue thankfully.

Both the USB headers are positioned fairly well. In fact, they're placed right next to each other, at the lower half of the mid-section of the motherboard. By positioning these headers in this manner, you're not going to encounter any case clutter, as you the USB and FireWire bracket wires will be taking up the PCI slots you decide to take up, and not any other neighboring PCI slots or other components.