Remember when I said the box didn't use any flashy or gaudy colors? Well the reason for that is they ran out of them after using them all on the motherboard. Luckily, color coordination doesn't affect performance or the ECS PF21 Extreme would be doomed from the start. The PCB is purple and all of the connections, component slots are all different colors (this is supposed to make identifying different connectors and stuff easier) don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with colorful, but the choice of colors should be reconsidered for this board IMO.

Using the picture above, I'll start at the bottom right corner and work my way to the left around the board. Starting at the left hand corner, the lime green IDE2 connector. This connector is supported by the SiS180 and supports RAID 0 or RAID 1 through the onboard SiS controller. It is also where you should connect your CD/DVD ROM drives, but due to the location of the IDE2 connection and the size of my case, my cables wouldn't reach. In this area you will also find 6 SATA ports two of them are also controlled by the SiS180 with the remaining four being controlled by the Intel ICH6R southbridge chip. Speaking of southbridge chips, the southbridge on the PF21 is passively cooled with a large circular aluminum heatsink with the word Extreme cut into it. This area also contains the CMOS battery, the BIOS chip and a large sticker reminding you once again this is an Extreme motherboard.

Moving along, and to the right you are presented with the Primary IDE connector, floppy connector, 24 pin ATX connector, and the dual chanel RAM slots (supports up to 4 GB) The 24 pin ATX connector is compatible with a 20 pin PSU, so don't worry if you don't have a 24 pin connection on your PSU.

For some reason I didn't take a pic of the CPU socket area, but you can see from the first pic, there isn't much to take a picture of, the area around the socket is pretty much empty and you should have no trouble with most of the aftermarket coolers available. The northbridge is actively cooled by a tall round heatsink with a 40mm fan. The NB fan is pretty loud, and if noise is a concern for you , you will deffinately want to replace the NB fan with a quieter aftermarket fan. Due to the height of the NB cooler it "might" get in the way of some coolers. The 4 pin 12v connection is also in this area (between the NB and the rear panel) it can be seen in the pic of the NB below, just to the right and behind.

For the most part the layout of this board has been pretty standard, aside from the secondary IDE plug being at the bottom of the board, furthest from your optical devices. The rear panel is a little different than a lot of other boards on the market. It incorporates a 40mm fan and a fan shroud that is supposed to help chanel hot air away from the CPU and power regulation components. I'm not sure how effective it actually is considering most computers these days have a minimum of 2 80mm fans already venting air out the back of the case via the PSU and at least 1 80mm rear exhaust. However, I'm sure it doesn't hurt performance, and if you really wanted to you could remove it. All of the other ports are present and accounted for PS/2 mouse and keyboard, 1 COM port, 1 mini firewire port, s/PDIF optical input and output ports, 4 USB 2.0 ports, Dual LAN ports and the 5 analog jacks for the onboard 8.1 channel audio.

Finally we make our way around to the slots for any add in cards you may have. Starting at the top and working our way down in the pic below you are provided with 1 PCI-E x16 slot. As you can see there is not a lot in the way as far as obstructions go until you get to the outside edge of the card, so you should have no problems with longer graphics cards. The retention clips for the RAM do come very close to the video cards PCB, so you should use some caution when install RAM or your vid card. Moving downward you have three standard PCI slots, note that the middle slot is a different color than the other two. This is a "PCI Extreme" slot, what makes it special is it has it's own power and data lines. This is supposed to provide a cleaner signal. Unfortunately I couldn't test it due to the cooler on my video card practically covering it up. Moving it down to the bottom PCI slot would be more beneficial for most of us, simply due to the cooling implemented on todays graphics cards needing much more space. Below the PCI slots you'll find two PCI-E x1 slots.

This board uses an LED system to warn of any possible problems with the expansion slots, depending on how you feel about flashing lights you will either love it or hate it, or if you are like me it will make no difference either way. There is a blue LED light under each slot, the way it is set up is the LED's flash if there is a problem and are solid if everything is A'ok. Unfortunately the board can't tell the difference in a problem with the card and a vacant slot, so if there is no card installed the LED's blink all of the time, and can't be turned off. I think a better solution would be off with no card present, solid if everything is OK and flashing if there is a problem. But, either way it didn't bother me, my case sits on my desk and does have a side window, the lights arent so bright that they were ever a distraction or an anoyance.

Overall I only have a couple of complaints with the layout of the PF21 board, as I've already mention the bottom of the board was a poor choice for the secondary IDE connection. Removing the giant ECS/Extreme badge and moving the connector to the right edge would even be an improvement, but Ideally higher up near the primary IDE connection would be nice and would prevent a user from having to buy longer cables just to plug in their CD ROM. The location of the 4 pin 12v ATX plug is the other complaint, Almost ever motherboard review I have ever read suggest move this plug to an outside edge, and I agree. Not only would it look better and make wire management easier, it would be easier to work with, in most cases the 4 pin ATX connector ends up being under the edge of your cooler and can be a pain to get to sometimes.