The expansion slots provide a decent level of flexibility. The upper most PCIe full length slots is a full x16 speed socket so if an external GPU is to be used this is the slot to populate. The other is only a x4 speed part despite being a full length slot. The other two slots are a PCIe x1 and PCI respectively. Below these are the two USB expansion ports, a firewire expansion port, SPDIF header and (half out of shot) the boards audio breakout socket.
Expansion slots and USB headers.
The last feature of the board is the I/O plate. Here there are a wealth of connectors including six USB connectors (the two blue ones are USB 3.0 capable), a PS2 connector, a variety of video connectors (VGA, DVI, HDMI and Displayport), an optical digital audio connector, firewire socket, eSATA socket, gigabit LAN port and six audio sockets (part of the onboard 7.1 audio system).
I/O plate.
Next we come to the 905-pin Llano based AMD E3850 chip. This is the business end of the chip ready for install - as you can see with the reduction in pin numbers from normal AMD fare a little gap has appeared in the centre of the chip.
Llano pins.
Installed and ready for use. The design is virtually identical to the AM2/AM3 designs we've seen over the years and as a result our trusty old Cooler Master Hyper TX3 heatsink will be used for testing.
E3850 in place.
