Foxconn X38A (Intel X38)
Author:
Date: 04.12.2007
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Foxconn X38A: Layout and Features
The board's design offers a few interesting traits. First, X38A uses three PCI Express x16 slots. And the developers have managed to avoid blocking of DIMM slots by the first PCI Express video card.
By the way, there are six memory slots on board, which also hasn't made the lives of engineers at Foxconn easier. As regards the power supply connectors, there are all positioned in a really convenient way - the main 24-pin on the bottom end of the board, with the additional 8-pin in the upper right-hand corner of the board. We should also note here that the board operates on plugging in to the PSU of the old configuration of cables (in particular, 20+4).
Near the CPU socket, there is a 4-pin CPU_FAN connector for a matching cooler.
But it is installed in quite an inconvenient point - near the north bridge, and access to the connector is hindered by the video card and heat pipes running from the chipset's radiator to the radiator on the power supply module.
Besides the CPU_FAN, there are two more 3-pin connectors onboard: FAN1 - near the north bridge, FAN3 - near the DIMM slots, as well as the 4-pin SYS_FAN - on the left-hand edge of the board.
Note that to the FAN1 you can plug in an additional fan (available in the bundle) which is mounted on the radiator of the north bridge.
The board offers a passive system for cooling the chipset and a power supply module. On the north and south bridges, as well as on the power components of the power supply module, there are massive radiators; they are all linked with heat pipes.
Under the north bridge, there are four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules. There is also a pair of 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR3 modules; however, you can't use DDR2 and DDR3 at the same time.
The slots are partitioned into two groups. The first group relates to the first link of the controller, the second one - to the second.
The overall memory capacity makes 8 GB for DDR2 and 4 GB for DDR3.
There are three PCI Express x16 v2.0 slots (all with latches) which are meant for video cards.
Sixteen bus lanes are allocated to the first and second slot, and merely four (because of the chipset's limitations) - to the third (black) slot. Besides the above listed slots, Foxconn X38A uses two more "regular" PCI slots as well as two PCI Express x1 slots.
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