ABIT SR7-8X (SiS 648): DDR400-Powered

Board Layout

The SR7-8X's layout is pretty clean in general. There aren't a lot of "extra" features such as RAID, FireWire, or Serial ATA. The plus side of this is that the SR7-8X's basic feature set results in a lower transistor count and therefore a lower selling price.

The cleaner layout makes for a somewhat trouble-free installation process. For example, there's enough room between the AGP slot and DIMM slots for installing and uninstalling RAM and video cards without the DIMM clips interfering. There are way too many boards on the market that have little-to-no room between the DIMM clips and an AGP card. Additionally, the capacitors around the CPU socket don't impede the uninstallation of the CPU heatsink, which is certainly convenient if you tend to upgrade CPU's or change heatsinks consistently.

Some of the minor complaints we had with the SR7-8X's layout was the positioning of the 20-pin ATX connector, which is located right next to the I/O ports. While this isn't too big of a deal, we still would have liked to have seen this connector placed almost anywhere else, ideally above the 3 DIMM slots at the top right-hand corner of the motherboard. Positioning the ATX connector this way makes it easier to add/remove items inside an ATX case, which is certainly a convenient for system builders.

Additionally, ABIT adds a tiny green heatsink over the SiS 648 North Bridge for cooling. If you like having a quiet system, passive cooling over your North Bridge will certainly help.

Shown above is the DIP package (Dual Inline Pin Package) BIOS chip ABIT chose for the SR7-8X (SoftMenu III); although the older DIP chips take up more room on motherboards, they're quite common on cheaper motherboards because of their low cost.

The ABIT SR7-8X motherboard uses the standard ATX form factor. Its dimensions are approximately 305 x 230 mm.