Introduction

If you've been looking high and low for a board with good features and the only thing that you're really concerned about is the integrity of the BIOS, the good news is that there's just more than one vendor offering DualBIOS. AOpen has been aggressively marketing their Die-Hard BIOS feature, just as much as Gigabyte flouting their DualBIOS technology. The AOpen AX4SPE Max is an alternative to all the more expensive first-tier 865PE boards we have out there and it's their turn to take the spotlight today.

The new AOpen AX4SPE Max is a board built for the power users with well-balanced features in mind. Dressed in a black PCB, the AOpen AX4SPE Max reminds us of the days when AOpen launched their Millennium edition of their 440BX motherboard. Then, PCB colors were the main features of a motherboard - at least it provided users a far departure of the usual dull green or yellow PCBs. However, in today's context, PCB colors are just mainly used as a fashion statement and it does nothing more than just make a board more pleasing to look at. But once it is installed into the casing, there's really nothing to drool about and it will just perform as well as any other boards with other colors.

Fashionable colored PCBs aside, the new AOpen AX4SPE Max is an interesting alternative to what is available in the market today. AOpen's unique blend of motherboard features, tweaks and software are instantly drawing a selected crowd of users who will put every cent of faith into AOpen's longstanding brand name and quality. Obviously, this is good news to all of us and we're equally excited to see AOpen making waves with their products. It's like going back to the good old BX days.

In the package, you'll find :-

The AOpen AX4SPE Max motherboard

A user's manual

AOpen Bonus Pack CD with drivers and software

Norton AntiVirus 2003 CD (OEM version)

Floppy drive ribbon cable

Ultra ATA-33 IDE cable

Ultra ATA-133 80-conductor cable

2x Serial ATA cable

1x Serial ATA power cable

2-port FireWire bracket

2-port USB 2.0 + Game port bracket

S/PDIF bracket

ATX I/O shield

Intel Application Accelerator & SiI3112A driver disks

Easy Installation Guide

Here's the complete technical specifications of the motherboard :-

AOpen AX4SPE Max Technical Specifications

Processor	Socket 478 for Intel® Pentium® 4 / Celeron® processors Intel® Celeron® Processors 1.7GHz - 2.0GHz or higher (400MHz FSB) Intel® Pentium® 4 Processors 1.4GHz - 3.06GHz or higher (533MHz FSB) Intel® Pentium® 4 Processors 2.4GHz - 3.2GHz or higher (800MHz FSB) Supports processor at 400 / 533 / 800MHz front side bus Supports processor with Hyper-Threading technology
Chipset	Intel 865PE chipset AGP 4x/8x slot (1.5V only) with fast write capability Supports 400/533/800MHz Intel NetBurst micro-architecture bus Supports up to 4GB of DDR333 or DDR400 SDRAM memory Supports single/dual channel memory configuration Intel ICH5R chipset Eight high-speed USB 2.0 ports 2x Serial ATA/150 ports Dual channel Ultra ATA/100 IDE bus master controller PCI bus mastering v2.3 I/O APIC Supports both ACPI and legacy APM power management Serial ATA/150 RAID 0 support
Cache memory	CPU Built-in 512KB (Northwood) L2 cache for Pentium 4 or 128KB L2 cache for Celeron
System memory	4 x 184-pin unbuffered DDR SDRAM DIMM Supports up to 4GB of unbuffered and non-ECC single/double-sided DDR266 / DDR333 / DDR400 SDRAM memory Supports 2.5V DDR SDRAM Supports ECC memory
PCI IDE	2x Ultra ATA-66/100 IDE ports integrated in ICH5R (up to 4 devices) Support for PIO, UDMA-33, Ultra ATA-66/100 IDE devices 2x Serial ATA/150 ports supported by ICH5R Up to 150MB/s transfer speeds Supports Serial ATA RAID 0 2x Serial ATA/150 ports powered by Silicon Image SiI3112A controller Supports RAID 0 or 1
I/O Ports and Headers	1x floppy port (360KB - 2.88MB) 2x serial port 1x parallel port (SPP/EPP/ECP) PS/2 Keyboard PS/2 Mouse 8x USB 2.0 ports (6x rear and 2x by cable through on-board header) 1x Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) LAN jack (powered by Broadcom BCM5702) 3x fan headers Audio jacks for Line In, Line Out and MIC (powered by Realtek ALC650) S/PDIF input/output header 2x IEEE-1394 header 1x IrDA header for infra-red module Game port header WOL (Wake on LAN) header Dr. LED header Front audio header
Expansion slots	6x 32-bit PCI slots, PCI 2.3 compliant 1x AGP 2x/4x/8x slot (0.8V/1.5V only)
Power Management	Supports ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface)
Form Factor	ATX Form Factor : 30.5cm x 24.4cm Fits into regular ATX case
BIOS	4Mbit (512KB) Flash EEPROM Award Flash BIOS with PnP and ACPI support Multi-boot on ZIP, ATAPI CD-ROM, SCSI, SATA, IDE #1, #2, #3, #4