The first thing you notice about the VH6 is the CPU socket. The
handle is made of plastic instead of metal. It folds down below the level where
the CPU mounts so you'll have no trouble fitting an oversize heatsink onto it.
There is enough gap between the socket and top of the motherboard so you won't
have to remove the power supply when removing the heatsink. However, you will
have to unplug the power supply connector first. At the center of the CPU socket
is a temp probe to keep check on the heat generated by your Pentium or Celeron
II. That is a really nice feature
In the above picture you can see all the nicely colored I/O ports. Like all
new motherboards, the Abit VH6 meets PC99 specs. You can also see the connectors
for the on board sound card. While there are some motherboards with good on
board sound, this is not one of them. Luckily, the on board sound can be easily
defeated in the BIOS.
One of the nice things about using a Socket 370 CPU is you won't have to
worry about your big Alpha cooler blocking off any DIMM slots. The VH6 comes
with three DIMM slots, allowing you to add as much as 768 Megs of RAM. The
location of the IDE and floppy connector is backwards in my opinion. The IDE
connections and floppy connector should switch places. This will make for less
messy IDE cable when connecting your CD ROM. Since the CD ROM is mounted higher
up than the floppy drive in most cases, the cables do a bit of a cross over. On
a positive note the connectors are placed very high up on the motherboard so you
shouldn't get the "Damn! The cable is not long enough to reach!" problem.
Personally I would have like to see Abit get rid of the modem riser slot and
replace it with another PCI slot. Putting the modem riser slot at its current
location does have one advantage. There is a lot of space between the AGP slot
and first PCI slot. This gap will allow you to add an aftermarket video cooler
like the Blue Orb and not worry about losing your first PCI slot.
Next page: How does it perform?
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