Abit IC7-Max3

Highly Commended - Personal Computer World

The Abit IC7-Max3, stands out from the crowd thanks to its use of the unusual Outside Thermal Exhaust System (Otes) cooling device. This technique was first used in Abit graphics cards to improve heat dissipation across chipsets, but has since been modified to cool the Max3's transistors and capacitors.

The result is something of a double-edged sword. Better cooling is provided, with the motherboard helping to expel warm air from inside your case, but the noise it generates in conjunction with the actively cooled northbridge is greater than on standard motherboards.

Other interesting additions to the Max3 include its support for Secure IDE. An adapter card sits between the hard disk and IDE cable to provide up to 192bit encryption at hardware level. The hardware keys needed to unlock your data take the form of two identical dongles connected to an external blanking plate. If these keys are not present on start-up, data will not be decrypted. This is great if you need advanced security, as data is kept safe even if your hard disk is stolen.

Six serial ATA (Sata) slots allow for a variety of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (Raid) arrangements that either improve performance or provide data redundancy.

Elsewhere, the Max3 has onboard six-channel audio, eight USB2 slots and three Firewire ports, one of which is of the smaller six-pin variety. And a Gigabit Ethernet port allows data transfers at up to 1,000Mbits/sec.

As you might expect from a motherboard with the Intel 875P chipset, the Max3's performance was at the top end of the group, but we did have to upgrade its Bios in order for it to support the 3.2GHz Prescott processor. Despite this and its relatively high price, the Max3 is a great motherboard that deserves our Highly Commended award.

Contact: Abit 01438 228 888
www.abit.com

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