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Foxconn Flaming Blade Motherboard Review
Author: William West
Published: Monday, October 05, 2009
Board Layout and Features Cont.
The Flaming Blade comes with the Intel ICH10R Southbridge chipset which supports 6 SATA ports and software RAID 0,1,5,10. Much to our surprise the SATA ports are not positioned at a 90 degree angle and extremely close to the topmost PCIe video card slot. The biggest issue here is getting your hands in there for drive maintenance when your video cards are installed.
Nearby you will find a single PATA connector controlled by a JMicron chip. Unlike the SATA ports this one is installed at a 90 degree angle.
Every Quantum Force motherboard comes with onboard power and reset buttons along with a handy Diagnostic LED, of course front panel connectors are located here for those of us that actually install their motherboards into a chassis.
The back I/O is pretty typical most motherboards and comes with 8 x USB 2.0 ports, 2x eSATA, 2x Gigabit NICs, PS2 Keyboard port, Optical sound output, CMOS Clear switch, and a surround sound audio connectors.
Overclocking enthusiast features found on the Flaming Blade include these voltage test points so you can get pure and accurate voltage readings of the CPU, Memory, Northbridge voltages in realtime. All you need is a voltage meter.
Motherboard cooling is accomplished by a maze of heatpipes that connect the PWM, Northbridge, and Southbridge chips. The primary cooler is located directly over the Northbridge chip and much like the cooler found on the BloodRage can be removed and replaced with a variety of aftermarket cooling devices.
