Tyan Tomcat K8E

Board Layout:

From past experience, Tyan motherboards are generally well laid out with usually very little flaws and are great for the most part. With the Tyan Tomcat K8E the examination of the motherboard begins in the upper right hand corner, like usual. The first major item of interest, are the memory slots. Running parallel to the PCI slots are the four DIMM slots, which support up to 4GB of DDR 400/333 (ECC/non-ECC). Immediately beneath the four DIMM slots is the CPU socket. For the most part, the CPU 939 socket is clear of any obstructions. One of the many attractive features with the K8E motherboard is the implementation of AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet technology, which dynamically scales processor speeds and voltages to obtain cooler temperatures. To the right of the socket, five of the six fan headers can be found. All five of these fan headers are 4-pin, rather than the traditional 3-pin fan headers we've been so accustom to. It was not until recently that Intel implemented these 4-pin fan headers on its LGA775 motherboards with PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) for automatic fan speed control. It's nice to see a good number of these fan headers, however if these were evenly distributed amongst the board, it might lead to an easier setup and organization of cables.

Another interesting item we see with the Tomcat K8E is the use of a passive heatsink to cool the NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra Chipset. Most motherboards these days generally take an active cooling approach. But we have to keep in mind that recent Tyan motherboards are geared toward server and workstation environments rather than being designed to reach a new level of overclocking. To the right of the nForce 4 are the dual ATA-133/100/66/33 IDE channels. Also in this area are the four SATA-II ports with NVRAID support. Running along both sides in the lower right hand corner of the motherboard, is the LPT and FDD connectors. Covering the rest of the PCB in this lower corner is an SMSC DME1737 LPC I/O chip, CMOS battery, BIOS chip, along with several different connectors. Some of the connectors are for SMDC, COM2, front audio, and front panel.

Continuing with the clockwise rotation, the next item of interest is the port 80 code display LED for diagnostic purposes. Powering the Firewire on the S2865AG2NRF model is a VIA VT6307 IEEE-1394a controller. One of the other items that server administrators can take special interest to is the onboard ATI RAGE XL graphics controller. Although attempting to play any recent 3D game on this graphics solution will render it almost inoperable, the RAGE XL should be suffice for server administration purposes. Beneath the graphics controller is a Hynix HY57V643220DT-6 8MB memory chip. With the Tyan Tomcat K8E one PCI Express x16, four PCI 2.3, and two PCI Express x1 slots. Seen next to the PCI slots is a Broadcom BCM5721 Gigabit LAN controller.

Above the expansion slots, and to the left of the CPU socket, a majority of the motherboard's power circuitry is located. In this area, the 8EPS12V 24 and 8-pin power connectors are found. Unlike the Tyan Tomcat i915, the K8E IS NOT compatible with older ATX PSUs that rely on the 20 and 4-pin connectors. On the rear of the motherboard, are two PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, one COM port, one 15-pin VGA port, three audio hacks, four USB2.0 ports, and two 10/100/1000 LAN ports. With the three included expansion port headers, more USB, Firewire, Printer, and COM ports are attainable.