The
first time I ever heard of Foxconn, it was an ATX case that was
being referred to. That was a couple of years ago, and for quite
some time, I knew Foxconn only as making cases. Then, out of the
blue as it seemed, I saw a review for a Foxconn motherboard. While
I don't remember what this board was exactly, or even where
the review was at, I do remember that the reviewer was quite impressed
with the board, especially since it was the first motherboard
that Foxconn had ever produced. Step forward just a little bit,
and we come to the present, and the Foxconn 925XE motherboard
that I have here for review. After having read that initial review,
I was rather curious to see how well this board performs.
What
You Get
Ok,
so as I should hope anyone with the knowledge to assemble a computer
would know, you do get a motherboard in this nifty package that
Foxconn sends with the 925XE. But what else do you get?
Cables
8 SATA Cables
3 Rounded EIDE Cables
1 Rounded Floppy Cable
4 Standard 4-Pin Molex to PCI-Express power adaptors
1 Back Panel Firewire Bracket
1 Back Panel USB Bracket
Documentation
and Drivers
RAID User Guide
Foxconn 925XE Users Manual
IDE and RAID Floppy Driver Discs
Driver CD-ROM
I
would have to say, I was rather impressed when I saw all of the
cables in the box. Most of the motherboards that I've had
in the past, and I've had a bunch, generally came with one
or two SATA cables, a couple of flat EIDE cables, a flat floppy
cable, and that was about it. Foxconn has basically included everything
that you might ever need, or even think you may need, to connect
your storage drives and external devices to your computer. In
my opinion, this is a really nice touch, and shows that Foxconn
actually wants to make a good product and include everything that
one might need to use it, as opposed to making the consumer go
out and buy more stuff because the motherboard didn't come
with it.
So,
you know what comes with the board, but what about the board
itself? The Foxconn 925XE comes on a red PCB and at first glance
appears to be quite a 'packed' board. While there are capacitors
close to the CPU socket, they are all relatively low profile,
and should not cause clearance issues with any heat sink or
water block. All of the larger components are situated far enough
from the socket that there should be no cooling device available
that won't fit, though I can't confirm this, as
I don't own every cooling device available.
Just
below the CPU socket we find the Northbridge, and unlike many
925X/XE boards on the market, the Foxconn board has an active
HSF assembly. Below the Northbridge you find the PCIe slots;
3 1x PCIe slots of the small variety and of course a single
16x PCIe slot for graphics. Below the PCIe slots are the PCI
slots, 3 of, so you won't need to change any of your cards over
to the new PCIe format if you have any.
Travelling
back to the top of the board and hitching a right we come across
the Ram Slot area. This Foxconn board has support for 4 DDR2 modules
in Dual channel, indicated by the differing colors. Also in this
area is an IDE slot, a floppy port and the 24 pin ATX connector.
Below this we can see the SATA ports (4 of), followed by 2 extra
IDE's and next to them a further 4 SATA ports given you a lot
of options for connecting storage devices.
Overall,
I found the board layout to be very well executed. One problem
that a lot of motherboards have is in regards to the memory slots,
and the video card. On a lot of motherboards, you basically have
to remove the video card in order to add or remove memory, because
the memory retention clips are jammed right up against the backside
of the video card. I am please to report that this is not the
case with the Foxconn 925XE. There is ample room to release the
memory retention clips, without having even the longest of video
cards interfere.
Other
than that, the 925XE has the usual array of IO connections, which
include 2 GIG Ethernet connections, PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse connections,
one serial port, one parallel port, a firewire connection, 4 USB
ports, and all of the audio connections to support the Intel HD
Audio capabilities.
The
BIOS
The
BIOS for the Foxconn 925XE has quite a lot going for it. As
is common among newer boards, not only can you select the boot
priority of a devices, you can also select (for the hard drives
at least) which hard drive to boot first, which does make for
a quick and easy way of supporting multiple operating systems.
You also have a seperate screen to dictate settings for each
of the SATA and IDE channels and their modes.
PCI,
Power and Temperatures are listed on seperate screens; no more
or less on these screens than you expect.
Moving
on to the more 'exciting' stuff of voltages, memory settings
and overclocking, we find that the Foxconn 925XE is pretty well
prepared for this. Voltages are can be changed under the SuperSpeed
screen (more on this in a moment) and regulated on a seperate
screen. Memory settings also have their own screen and while
the important settings are there and it's nice to have them
on their own screen, it does make this screen a little bare.
Overclocking
from the BIOS, is supported pretty well, and uses Foxconn's
'Super' suite of utilities. SuperSpeed, as the name suggests,
is used to adjust the speed of your CPU and system, and it's
nice to see that you can key in an FSB directly rather than
having to scroll through a list. Under BIOS features we find
not only the SuperSpeed page but also the SuperBoot (to dictate),
SuperBIOS-Protect (to aid in protecting/saving your BIOS settings
and SuperRecovery Hotkey (to allow you to set a key combination
that will reset the BIOS in the event you find you can no longer
boot the system).
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