X-bit labs

ATI Radeon Xpress 200P for Overclockers: Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 Mainboard Review (page 10)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 09/02/2005 | 10:27 AM ]

For your convenience there are two micro-buttons in the lower left corner of the mainboards PCB: Reset and Power On. These buttons repeat the functions of the corresponding case buttons that you connect to the board when assembling the system inside a system case, however, if you are using the board in an open stand, like we did, these buttons help a lot.

The processor voltage regulator on Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 deserves our special attention. First of all, I would like to stress that it doesn’t use the additional 4-pin 12V power connector. Although this connector is laid out on the mainboard next to the CPU voltage regulator unit, it is not necessary to plug a cable into it. The mainboard runs perfectly well and stable when powered by only one main 24-pin ATX power cable.

The voltage regulator itself is designed following the four-channel schematics. All MOSFETs included into this circuitry are located as a 4x4 matrix and are cooled down with a special aluminum heatsink. Note that this mainboard can monitor the thermal status of the power converter with the help of a special thermal diode located in the middle of the transistor matrix.

They used electrolytic capacitors from three manufacturers: SANYO, Nichicon and TEAPO. The first two names have been long known as high-quality component makers, however, the last one used to deliver capacitors of not very reliable quality and not very long life-time. Today TEAPO claims that there are no problems with the quality of their electronic components any more. However, during our stress-tests one of Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 mainboard failed for this particular reason: the capacitor dies when the board was running with a Venice based CPU overclocked to 2.8GHz. So, I would doubt the absolute reliability of the processor voltage regulator on this mainboard.

In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the mainboard back panel, where all the ports and connectors are. The thing is that Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 doesn’t have a standard back panel design. I would even call this design kind of strange. The thing is that almost half of the available space is not used at all, however, the mainboard doesn’t have any Parallel or Serial ports. There are only PS/2 connectors for the keyboard and mouse, four High Speed USB ports, RJ45 network connector with the diagnostic LEDs, six audio-jacks, and one IEEE1394 port. You can add a few more ports by installing the brackets that go with the board, and this will bring you a coaxial SPDIF In and Out as well as one more FireWire port.