Performance :

Performance of the AX6BC Pro is excellent - among the top of the field of BX mainboards. It is generally recognised as one of the very best for overall stability, and for me this is of prime importance. In fact, this motherboard was used as the benchtest and burn-in machine for Overclockers Australia's sale of overclocked C366's. More than once did a customer with an Abit board need a higher voltage for stability than the AOpen needed. Also, Agg is using one as the basis of his water-cooled insanity. At the time of writing, the board is stable at 124MHz.. that's a C366 at 682MHz.

Overclockability:

The AX6BC Pro reflects perhaps the previous generation of overclocking- friendly boards, in that it has voltage adjust, rock-solid stability and a tweak-friendly bios - but lacks the intermediate FSB speeds of the newer Abit and Soyo boards. Unfortunately this means that you won't be able to creep up to the limit of the cpu in as small a steps as you'd like. This is especially of importance with the faster Celeron's that run such high multipliers. Take for example the C466. The 7x multiplier means 100MHz FSB (700MHz core) is never going to happen without insane cooling. Your next lower choice on this board is 83MHz FSB, with the associated potential for HDD problems due to the overclocked PCI bus. The next lower choice is 75MHz FSB, which is a very mild overclock to 525MHz. Above 100MHz the choices are more sensible, so if you're looking to crank your C300A or P3, or even an extreme rig using peltiers and/or water-cooling, you can bump it up a little at a time.

There are a number of tall electrolytic capacitors positioned just behind the slot 1 connector which effectively rules out a Celery/Pentium sandwich - it also can be awkward on some large heatsink retention clips. The DIMM sockets are a reasonable distance from the slot 1 connector, and don't cause a problem with most heatsink/fan combos. Really tall units such as the FDP-32 will block the first ram slot.

As the v-core is adjustable to a maximum of 2.2V, some will complain of a lack of higher v-core voltages. This is comparable to the Soyo boards and many others. 2.2v is pretty much the limit of what I feel comfortable running long-term anyway. However there are boards, Abit's in particular, that let you set 2.3V or higher. Again, if you're using a Socket370 CPU (Celeron), you can get a slocket with v-core adjust.

The Aopen also has a quick-recovery key for those over-ambitious overclocking sessions. If you find your machine won't POST with the current settings you can power it off, hold down the HOME key and power up. The system will boot with the CPU at the default speed so you can go into the BIOS and try something a little more conservative.

Revision Notes :

There have been a couple of BIOS revisions since the board's inception - no major problems needing to be fixed but it's good to keep it up to date. Check AOpen's website.

Lowlights :

• AGP bus divider adjustment via jumper
• Poor hardware monitoring - only 2 fan headers and one thermistor.
• Unable to read thermal diode in cpu core.
• Position of floppy connector at rear of board
• Lack of intermediate FSB speeds
• Position of capacitors behind slot1 connector
• Lack of printed manual (it's on CD-ROM) - quick installation guide included to get you going.

Highlights :

• Jumperless (except AGP divider)
• Supports V-core adjustment through bios
• Quick-default key (for recovering from over-ambitious CPU settings)
• High quality of manufacture and components
• High Performance / High Stability
• Supplied with Norton's Anti-virus on CD

Summary :

An all-round strong performer, with excellent stability. The good points certainly outweigh the bad. 3 months or so ago this would have been regarded as an excellent board without faults - since then the introduction of boards such as Abit's BP6 have raised the bar in terms of hardware monitoring and FSB selection. However, you would be pressed to find a better performing and more stable board - this is reflected in the fact that AOpen have not yet superceded this model - there is a "Gold" version available, which is identical apart from a gold-plated heatsink and larger capacitors. On a board which is already rock-stable, I can't see them selling many with the AUD$100 extra price tag. A highly recommended board.