ABIT BH6 MOTHERBOARD
Last updated: 11/24/00
 System
Monitoring. The BH6 has the LM79 hardware monitoring
chip. It monitors system temperature, CPU fan speed, and motherboard
voltages. You can see these values in the Chipset Features Setup
in the CMOS setup. Judging from watching the voltages for about five
minutes, Abit really has voltage regulation perfected. Except for
the -12V, which changed once and the regulation of which is not as critical
as other voltages, the voltages didn't change at all. On other boards
I can see them change frequently.
I can find no way to set a temperature alarm threshold
in the CMOS. And it's too bad there is no direct CPU temperature monitoring. I
couldn't find any thermisters on the board. The system must be using the
sensor built into the LM79, which is too far away from the CPU to react directly
to any CPU temperature change before the CPU overheats. When I unplugged
the CPU fan for as long as I dared, there was no alarm and I did not see the
system temperature go up at all.
Expansion
slots. The BH6 has 1 AGP, 5 PCI, and 2 ISA slots. I
would gladly trade one of those PCI slots for another ISA slot. The
ISA bus won't die until one can buy PCI printer boards for less than $20.00
and the vast amount of equipment out there with ISA interfaces (scanners,
etc.) is gone. I still occasionally run out of ISA slots on boards
that have three of them. I have yet to fill four PCI slots
in a computer.
I/O
connectors and cables. There are PS/2 keyboard, PS/2 mouse,
1 printer, two serial, and to USB along the back of the motherboard (the
configuration matches all of the Aopen
ATX cases I have reviewed). The hard disk and floppy
drive connectors are along the front per the ATX spec. I'd like to
see a second hard disk cable...
Capacitors. There
are plenty of apparently high-quality 105°C electrolytic capacitors, especially
around the power components for the CPU and an ample number of bypass, etc.
capacitors. I didn't see any tear-drop tantalums; but I'm not going
to try to second-guess the engineers who designed this board. The board
is absolutely stable and that is what counts.
User
Manual. Excellent user manuals are an Abit hallmark. The
manual is extensive, well-written, and full of illustrations and pictures.
Click here for
the user's manual
Larry
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