Published in Transportation

MCP78H board from Asus pictured

by on27 February 2008
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ATX board without graphics

The soon to launch MCP78H from Nvidia, which is likely to be called the nForce 730a, has already appeared on a motherboard from Asus. Although yet to be officially announced, we can bring you the first exclusive picture of the M3N78-EH motherboard.

The board is quite different from the mATX M3N78-EMH which we told you about here. It shares the single chip chipset design, which makes this board looks somewhat bare compared to what you expect from an ATX motherboard. It looks like Asus is targeting the entry level market with this board, as it lacks most high-end features.

The rear I/O for example, consists of only two PS/2 ports, a parallel and a serial port (does anyone still use these?), four USB 2.0 ports, what we presume is a Gigabit Ethernet connector and audio jacks for the onboard 7.1-channel sound. The rest of the board is equally basic, although the new chipset adds support for up to six SATA connectors and all are pressent.

Further to this there are four memory slots, a single x16 PCIe slot, two x1 PCIe slots and three PCI slots, which leaves a fair bit of empty space towards the bottom of the board where the floppy connector resides. There's also four headers for a further eight USB 2.0 ports and an IDE connector to round things off.

This could possibly end up being a good board for anyone looking for an affordable AM2+ board, but we don't know what the retail price is as yet, but considering that the M3N78-EMH is already listed on Geizhals.at for about €70-80, we'd expect this board to cost a lot less, since it's using a cheaper chipset and has less features.

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