ECS GF8200A Black & ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI

Motherboard Layout:

The K10N78FullHD-hSLI is a micro ATX motherboard while the GF8200A Black is standard ATX. There is the obvious size difference, but both motherboards are laid out in a similar fashion with a near matching set of features. In the upper right hand corner of the ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI motherboard are the four DDR2 memory slots. The motherboard chipset supports up to 8GB of DDR2-1066MHz memory. Next to the system DIMM slots are the 24-pin ATX power connector and the lone IDE connector.

Further down on the ASRock motherboard are six Serial ATA 2.0 ports, the super I/O controller, CMOS battery, FDD connector, two USB 2.0 headers, and a 3-pin fan connector. The expansion slots on this micro ATX motherboard include one PCI Express x1, one PCI Express x16, and two PCI. The PCI Express x16 slot is compatible with NVIDIA's Hybrid SLI / Hybrid Power provided by the GeForce 8200 Chipset. However, neither of these NVIDIA technologies is presently supported under Linux. Squeezed between the AM2+ CPU socket and the PCI Express slots are the GeForce 8200 (MCP78S) Chipset that supplies many of the features on this motherboard. Passively cooling this chip is a small aluminum heatsink.

The GeForce 8200 Chipset supports AMD AM2 and AM2+ processors, including the latest quad-core Phenom processors. Behind the CPU socket is much of the power circuitry while in front are the DDR2 memory slots. However, those using a reference heatsink provided by AMD or a slightly larger after-market model, there shouldn't be any installation problems. In the back corner of this micro ATX motherboard is the 4-pin ATX12V power connection.

The ports at the rear I/O panel include two PS/2, one VGA, one DVI, six USB 2.0, one Gigabit ethernet, and three audio jacks.