Written:
11/05/2000
Written by: Tron®
Price: $129 (Find a MUCH lower price at
iBuyer)
Manufactured by: AOpen
Black Beauty! It's sleek expanses of black circuit
board, stylish all-aluminum northbridge heatsink, and packaging worthy of a
Jewelry store, give you the sense that AOpen wants you to like this board.
AOpen's AX34 Pro II Socket370 mainboard makes you want to "ooh" and "ahh" just
at first glance. But how good of a mainboard is it? Before we find out, a big
thanks to AOpen for providing the mainboard for review!
Aopen's AX34 ProII is the third Socket370 VIA Apollo
133a mainboard we've had the opportunity to test here in the Techzone lab, not
to mention the prettiest. Prettiest??
At first glance, you notice they WANT you to look at
their mainboard, almost as a piece of artwork! Once you open the
larger-than-usual mainboard box, you see that the mainboard isn't housed in your
basic foam lined electrostatic bag. Rather, it's in it's own fitted plastic
display case.
Two things you'll notice right off the bat. The circuit
board is all black, and the Northbridge is topped by a polished all-aluminum
heatsink. With 1AGP / 6PCI / 1 AMR, 4 DIMM slots (for 2Gigabytes of SDRAM!!),
and UDMA-100 (provided by the 686B Southbridge), it's obvious that Aopen intends
this board for something other than the OEM crowd. If you're the type who's into
rounded cables, mega-fans, plexi view panels and blowholes, AOpen is definitely
targeting your unique sensibilities with this board. It's one of the few
mainboards I can say is just nice to look at
Next page: The specs
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