Fortunately the SATA port placement has been improved since the PX845PE. They are located right next to the ICH5 (non Raid) Southbridge, between PCI slots 4 and 5, which shouldn’t pose a problem for the PCI slots and SATA ports to be used at the same time.
The board again makes use of the sliding AGP retention mechanism, which I happen to like quite a bit. Unfortunately, thanks to the placement of the FDC, installing and removing ram will require first removing the video card.
The back plate is pretty much standard fare, nothing you haven’t seen a thousand times before. The only thing really to note here is that there are 2 USB ports on the back, not 4 like many other boards. Even with the 4-port USB expansion plate, that still only makes use of 6 of the ICH5’s 8 total USB ports. There is an onboard USB header for the last two ports, but you will need to provide the ports for it.
Of course the reason you are reading this is to see how this board overclocks, so let’s get to it!
