Introduction, Mainboard form-factor – Intel FSB800 (PC3200) User Manual

Page 11

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Introduction

Page 1-5

Mainboard Form-Factor

The board is designed with ATX form factor - the latest industry standard of
chassis. The ATX form factor is essentially a Baby-AT baseboard rotated 90

degrees within the chassis enclosure and a new mounting configuration for the

power supply. With these changes the processor is relocated away from the
expansion slots, allowing them all to hold full length add-in cards. ATX defines a

double height aperture to the rear of the chassis which can be used to host a

wide range of onboard I/O. Only the size and position of this aperture is defined,
allowing PC manufacturers to add new I/O features (e.g.; TV input, TV output,

joystick, modem, LAN, audio, etc.) to systems. This will help systems integrators

differentiate their products in the marketplace, and better meet your needs.
•

By integrating more I/O down onto the board and better positioning the hard

drive and floppy connectors material cost of cables and add-in cards is

reduced.

•

By reducing the number of cables and components in the system, manufac-

turing time and inventory holding costs are reduced and reliability will

increase.

•

By using an optimized power supply, it's possible to reduce cooling costs
and lower acoustical noise. An ATX power supply, which has a side-

mounted fan, allows direct cooling of the processor and add-in cards making
a secondary fan or active heatsink unnecessary in most system applications.

PCI slots

Expandable I/O

Figure 2: Summary of ATX chassis features

CPU

Single chassis

fan for system

ATX

Power

Supply

ATX power connector

Floppy/IDE

connectors

AGP slot

3 1/2-inch

Bay

5 1/4-inch

Bay

ATX 12V power

connector

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